Speaker 1: Money. We all take val We are the authority on
Speaker 1: all things R and ladies and gentlemen, what's going on.
Speaker 1: I am Tank, I'm Ja Valentine and this is the
Speaker 1: R and B Money Podcast. The authority, the whole new authority.
Speaker 1: Now were whole new authority. It's getting different. It's different today. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we will tell you. We talk about we're talking about
Speaker 1: the essence of a thing that is so fragile that
Speaker 1: that you can't say it too loud. You you have
Speaker 1: to lay to gentlemen some noise. Oh man, we know,
Speaker 1: we know what we love. We get it. This is different.
Speaker 1: First of all, man, thank you all so much, Thank
Speaker 1: you guys so much, man for coming um this. These
Speaker 1: are the type of moments for us, um that really
Speaker 1: bless us, that really bless us when we get to really,
Speaker 1: um dabble into the foundation of this whole thing. You
Speaker 1: know what I mean, because you know these are these
Speaker 1: are roads, dirt roads, gravel roads, um, that were paved.
Speaker 1: These are you know, houses that were completely you know,
Speaker 1: built from the ground up that you know, me and
Speaker 1: this guy now we get to walk those roads and
Speaker 1: we get to go into those buildings because you are
Speaker 1: so first, thank you you know what I mean, Um,
Speaker 1: you say something because I'm can I start off by
Speaker 1: saying this, please whatever you want, whatever you want. Yes,
Speaker 1: let me just say this, Man, to you two young guys,
Speaker 1: Jay Tank, We've watched you guys from Afar with a
Speaker 1: great deal of admiration, and we talked about this all
Speaker 1: the time. We're from two different different generations. What you
Speaker 1: two young guys have done, the hit makers, the writing,
Speaker 1: we admire it. We want you to know how we
Speaker 1: feel about it, and we we say to ourselves all
Speaker 1: the time. As time goes on, the circumstance makes things
Speaker 1: better for the younger ones. But when we came along,
Speaker 1: we probably didn't have the opportunities that you did, but
Speaker 1: we watched you guys take it and run with it.
Speaker 1: And before we started this today, when we're talking about
Speaker 1: Jay coming out of retirement, enough, that's grandson. So what
Speaker 1: that speaks to, man, it really speaks to what you
Speaker 1: guys have taken and done with it. We wish we
Speaker 1: would have had the opportunity. You know, we're gonna talk
Speaker 1: about it today, about the obstacles that were in our
Speaker 1: way racism the sixties. We didn't have the opportunity, but
Speaker 1: we said this all the time, especially with the rappers
Speaker 1: because we're in R and B. But the rappers said,
Speaker 1: before we let you take our music, we'll sell it
Speaker 1: out of our car. Had we taken that stance when
Speaker 1: we were coming up, it would have been quite different.
Speaker 1: So we watch you guys with all this admiration, man,
Speaker 1: because that's what y'all did. You told the industry you're
Speaker 1: not gonna mess around, You're not gonna mess us up.
Speaker 1: We determined to do what we do, and you've done it.
Speaker 1: And I'm speaking for the whispers when I say this, man,
Speaker 1: great just of admiration to both of you. That's what
Speaker 1: it means to us. Let me let me add one.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna add one word to what he's saying, and
Speaker 1: it's a short way of saying what you guys did
Speaker 1: that we didn't do. You understood the word ownership way
Speaker 1: better than we did. We understood it, but when we
Speaker 1: came along, even if we had understood it, we the
Speaker 1: times wouldn't allow it. But y'all didn't have that problem.
Speaker 1: And I just love you for it because the people
Speaker 1: that's gonna be after you, your kids, their kids, they're
Speaker 1: gonna learn from you too. You know, so you got
Speaker 1: if we didn't understood what ownership really meant, fighting, dying,
Speaker 1: ford do whatever, we've probably been a lot better, but
Speaker 1: we didn't, and we're not. We're not blaming nobody but
Speaker 1: us and all the foals we had we put on
Speaker 1: us because we got the same brain that you. We
Speaker 1: might use a little different, but we all got a brain.
Speaker 1: Now how you use it as your problem, But y'all
Speaker 1: understood that word ownership. And I don't want to thank
Speaker 1: you for it, just the times itself allow you to
Speaker 1: do that. Like he said, during the time that we
Speaker 1: came along, there was no such thing and they weren't
Speaker 1: gonna give it to you. And you were so hungry
Speaker 1: at the time just to have a record deal, you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying, because you already knew. Look, if
Speaker 1: you'd have walked in and said, Okay, I'll take the deal,
Speaker 1: but I won't own everything that I do, they tell you,
Speaker 1: okay next, that's what would have happened to you. So
Speaker 1: we didn't even have that opportunity and was never afforded
Speaker 1: that opportunity. But as you get older, you know, like
Speaker 1: the the people like the Ray Charles and you know,
Speaker 1: those kind of people were able to go back and
Speaker 1: get that ownership. Now that that's been paid for, you guys,
Speaker 1: you know, you don't necessarily have to go to a
Speaker 1: record company. There's so many other avenues to put your
Speaker 1: record out. Now, we didn't have none of that. So,
Speaker 1: like like like guy said, I don't think it was
Speaker 1: dumbness on our part, another kind of thing. We just
Speaker 1: didn't have the opportunity and we put it probably have
Speaker 1: been railroaded out of the business. So you just kind
Speaker 1: of had to flow with the waters until you know,
Speaker 1: you got to the position where we are today where
Speaker 1: now we can go back and record everything that done
Speaker 1: over the years. But it but it took. It took
Speaker 1: some arrogance though. It took some cockiness. The younger generation, y'all.
Speaker 1: Y'all was crazy, y'all say I'm not taking the ship
Speaker 1: excuse my expression. And that's what it took. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm talking about. You know, we were humble, man,
Speaker 1: because we were trying to get in the door. You know,
Speaker 1: I mean, y'all said, hey, you ain't taking my hip
Speaker 1: and sucking it up. That's what y'all, And that's what
Speaker 1: needed to be said, you know, not even though when
Speaker 1: you had we said that it still would have been limited.
Speaker 1: But as time moves on, the opportunity to get greater,
Speaker 1: and y'all took advantage of it, and I think it's
Speaker 1: just great, man. I just want to extend you guys.
Speaker 1: You know a lot of grace right in that regard,
Speaker 1: because you know the idea of thinking for yourself and
Speaker 1: wanting to own there's a different There was a different
Speaker 1: repercussion in your time then there is in our time,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. And that's from your blood,
Speaker 1: sweat and tears of doing everything that you were able
Speaker 1: to do right. But you know, it's it's hard to say,
Speaker 1: you know, walking the door and have this mind to
Speaker 1: want to own something when in those days it could
Speaker 1: possibly cost you more than just your career. It's like
Speaker 1: the lyric that jay Z says. He said, I'm coming
Speaker 1: back to get everything that they from what everything that
Speaker 1: they took from the co crush? That's exactly and he
Speaker 1: literally did that, and he had to make the decision
Speaker 1: of I'm willing to sink or swim. I think for
Speaker 1: us it happened in a couple of ways. I think
Speaker 1: obviously in tank situation, it was more so about his longevity,
Speaker 1: because you know, he started off with one of those
Speaker 1: draconian deals, you know what I mean, one of those situations.
Speaker 1: He just outlasted it. You know. For me, it started
Speaker 1: in a very independent space because obviously, I I started
Speaker 1: off as a kid in a group, and I watched
Speaker 1: my father get blackballed in music business at a very
Speaker 1: young age. So I had to come from a different angle,
Speaker 1: so what all. And being from the Bay Area has
Speaker 1: pushed independence in my mind, because, like you said, those
Speaker 1: rappers that were going out of the trunk were Bay
Speaker 1: Area rappers, absolutely, you know what I mean. So for me,
Speaker 1: I just always had a different mindset of Okay, one,
Speaker 1: they're not gonna let me in because of my name
Speaker 1: at the time. Um So I gotta go around the corner,
Speaker 1: and I got to create these this buzz and this
Speaker 1: whole other thing, and that wish an independent mindset and
Speaker 1: then us coming together once we finally locked in. We
Speaker 1: looked at it like, you know what, we're willing to
Speaker 1: take less in the beginning so it can be greater later.
Speaker 1: And that's how that's how we end up here, betting
Speaker 1: on ourselves, on ourselves, real bets, like we've we've said
Speaker 1: in some offices and they've had to tell some people.
Speaker 1: You know. Now, I'm gonna roll with him at the
Speaker 1: end of the day. Like we always say, we'll split
Speaker 1: a happy meal. What I'm saying, I'm gonna roll with
Speaker 1: my happy meal. Friends. You know what I'm saying. Before
Speaker 1: this construct, tell me what we can and can't do
Speaker 1: and what we're capable of. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1: So you know again those are you? You all standing
Speaker 1: firm in in any space, in any capacity. Is the
Speaker 1: reason for sure, you know what I'm saying. Because there's
Speaker 1: there's evolution, there's us being able to watch that and say,
Speaker 1: oh man, how can we learn from that and what
Speaker 1: extra can we bring to that with now the new
Speaker 1: technology in the world being smaller. Man, you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. And now it's even crazier. Iso, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. We're back looking for you. It just goes,
Speaker 1: we're back looking for you. We're back wanting to feel
Speaker 1: how you made us feel. We're back, man, You know
Speaker 1: what I mean. It is a beautiful circle to make. Listen,
Speaker 1: you tell me, is it a beautiful man? I tell you,
Speaker 1: we feel so honored man to be here talking to
Speaker 1: two young guys that are in today's music we come from.
Speaker 1: It wasn't like that, and I just said all the time, man,
Speaker 1: I'm just so excited to see how watched the young
Speaker 1: talent today and people talk about it. Even we came along,
Speaker 1: they said, well, you gotta be careful. We had this
Speaker 1: song called seems like I Gotta Do Wrong before they
Speaker 1: noticed me. That was the title. That was the title,
Speaker 1: that was the whole title. Seems like I got to
Speaker 1: do wrong. And my mother said, y'all, y'all gonna be y'all,
Speaker 1: don't get trouble saying stuff like that. But today that's what,
Speaker 1: that's what. Yeah, but we're imagine back then, we had
Speaker 1: to be so careful about trying to offend the establishment.
Speaker 1: Like live El said, we was trying to get in.
Speaker 1: And then let's go twenty years later. You now, we're
Speaker 1: talking about twenty years later and you're doing that. You're younger,
Speaker 1: you're twenty years younger than us, and it's still around still.
Speaker 1: But the bravery, man, that's what I talked about. What
Speaker 1: y'all did. You said, I gonna roll with him. You
Speaker 1: know how brave that was when you did that. You
Speaker 1: understand what you was doing what with us? It wasn't.
Speaker 1: It was crazy and done that. But you said, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna roll with him. Yeah, I'm gonna you bucking tradition. Man,
Speaker 1: Well let me go to youth, let me go back
Speaker 1: to the ridge. I'm gonna tell you one quick story
Speaker 1: how we even got our name. It might sound funny,
Speaker 1: but it's the God's truth. We went to a little
Speaker 1: record company called Dolray Records, owned by Luberdale, who long
Speaker 1: he's didn't gone, but he gave us a shot and
Speaker 1: we were auditionally. We never had a problem with the
Speaker 1: singing part. Like most black young acts you know, all
Speaker 1: sing So we went in and we were singing for him.
Speaker 1: He said, man, I love you guys. Sound you got
Speaker 1: this soft y'all are different sounds like a whisper. Said
Speaker 1: why don't we call you the whispers? And Nick? He said, man, listen,
Speaker 1: anything you want to call it. You give us this deal,
Speaker 1: you call us the whispers. But the point I make,
Speaker 1: that's what we had to do to it end. We
Speaker 1: didn't We didn't know nothing by no money. We wasn't
Speaker 1: even interested in money, even though we needed it. But
Speaker 1: that wasn't the point. Back then, we wanted to get
Speaker 1: in the door, which we did, and to his credit,
Speaker 1: it seems like I gotta do wrong. You love us.
Speaker 1: So these are songs that you never heard before. Both
Speaker 1: of you were even boy, he wasn't even the world,
Speaker 1: you know, but this is what we had to do
Speaker 1: to get in. And like the vel said, so you
Speaker 1: can you imagine what you would have said going on
Speaker 1: talking about man, listen, I want to deal, but I
Speaker 1: got own. You know what you need to told you
Speaker 1: where it was. We're gonna call you the Whispers. But now,
Speaker 1: like we we love to go back to the beginning.
Speaker 1: And this is a great segue into going to the beginning,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, the inception, the how we
Speaker 1: get to the whispers? How did we get to the whispers? Like?
Speaker 1: Was it he even got to that meeting? Was where
Speaker 1: you got to that meeting? Wasn't somebody that man? Y'all?
Speaker 1: Should you understand something? Y'all? Boy, y'all will be good together?
Speaker 1: Like how did that even happen? That was? That was
Speaker 1: a strange story. But let's start with the two of us.
Speaker 1: Scottie and I born in Fort Worth, Texas, moved to Nevada.
Speaker 1: My father worked for the Navy, we eventually came to
Speaker 1: Los Angeles. My father was a jazz guy. He thought
Speaker 1: rhythm and blues was below him. Wow, I know. Yeah.
Speaker 1: We started listening to Motown and the Temptations. My dad said,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk.
Speaker 1: Those are the kings and queens of music. You can't sing.
Speaker 1: What do you say? It was R and B what
Speaker 1: That's how he felt about that. But as youth like you, guys, man,
Speaker 1: we would listening to Motown like all the young people.
Speaker 1: We wanted to be the next Temptations. But we ended
Speaker 1: up in the sixties on a talent show, Scotty and
Speaker 1: I as the Scott Twins, Nicholas, Marcus and Gordy as
Speaker 1: the Eden Trio. They were performing as a trio. We
Speaker 1: were performing as a duet, and while backstage waiting to
Speaker 1: go on, we started harmonizing with each other, the five us,
Speaker 1: trying to be like what was on the ride, and
Speaker 1: we said, a man, after this talent show, we gotta
Speaker 1: hook this up. We can become a vocal group. And
Speaker 1: that's how The Whispers was formed. Backstage, backstage high school
Speaker 1: talent show, High school talent show Jordan High School in Watch, California.
Speaker 1: But we were to do that, and I might add
Speaker 1: that we won that talent show. Yeah, never said he
Speaker 1: would tell you that because we did a lot of
Speaker 1: talent shows back then. Remember the guy's name Hunter Handcock.
Speaker 1: He was this shop, so he'd come through the neighbor
Speaker 1: we lived in the projects. He'd come through, and that
Speaker 1: was the exciting thing that was gonna happen. Everybody looked forward.
Speaker 1: We get a lot of old the start that you go,
Speaker 1: that's even better with putting it. But we would always
Speaker 1: end up we were like competing against each other and
Speaker 1: neiguatives and man, one of these things, we're gonna win.
Speaker 1: One of these we would always win. But like well said,
Speaker 1: once we put the sound together and we heard it,
Speaker 1: we said, hey, because what we I think with my father,
Speaker 1: to his credit, what he did give us that we
Speaker 1: didn't know till later, it was valuable, was Bob. For
Speaker 1: a while before we got like you was saying, well
Speaker 1: what about before that? Before that we were about to
Speaker 1: be back. You know, my father said, if you won't
Speaker 1: learn how to sing, learn how scat and harmonade and harmina.
Speaker 1: That's what my father, he was saying, you know he was.
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, it took us me to
Speaker 1: this day when we started singing on and beat. My
Speaker 1: father is just a little bit boys sing right what
Speaker 1: it means sing right, that's not singing. And it was
Speaker 1: but to him, you see what I'm saying. So he said,
Speaker 1: if you want to learn to saying scap like ella,
Speaker 1: that's the thing. And we did. That's what it. So
Speaker 1: that's where but we know later on in life when
Speaker 1: we start singing, all that would come into play, and
Speaker 1: it worked to help develop our sound and the whole thing.
Speaker 1: And it was whispered you here today. That's where it
Speaker 1: pretty much all came. Well, that's what those whispers because
Speaker 1: I didn't come along until he came later years later,
Speaker 1: the fifteen years Alter and Walter almost joined the group.
Speaker 1: He joined the Bottle, came back from Vietnam, rejoined the Whispers,
Speaker 1: and that's when he and then I came in about
Speaker 1: a year or so after you got drafted. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: got drafted with the Vietnam. Yeah. Really it's been one year. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So how does the government decide to draft one? Can't
Speaker 1: do it? Can't do you can't do it. You can
Speaker 1: only take one first any brothers, Yeah first, I ended
Speaker 1: up getting draft first born. That's it if they just yeah,
Speaker 1: just flipped around in the wound. One time. He was
Speaker 1: glad that they took him. I wouldn't have never made it.
Speaker 1: There was a young dis draft up in the Bear
Speaker 1: of all places. He was the how this thing on
Speaker 1: the radio? I dink time I know who you're talking about?
Speaker 1: His Sylvester Solon. Yeah, we had a story about your dad.
Speaker 1: We got anything. I got stories. Your dad probably didn't
Speaker 1: tell you, but and you may not want be. So
Speaker 1: we was down. We were together, but Slide heard a
Speaker 1: record called never Again, That's just jockey, and he said,
Speaker 1: maybe what are these guys gonna bring them to it?
Speaker 1: He brought us to the Barrier. And when we came
Speaker 1: to a blue place called a sportsman club, your dad
Speaker 1: met him mentioned there was a sportsman club the showcase
Speaker 1: mcchezmos out misress All Barrier. So he brought us from
Speaker 1: here to Los Angeles to the Sportsman Club, sly Stone
Speaker 1: on the radio, and we were supposed to be there
Speaker 1: for like a week. We end up staying there two years.
Speaker 1: We were the opening act for every major act that
Speaker 1: came through that and that during that time, it was
Speaker 1: Curtis mayfield oldest reading. We saw all this reading a
Speaker 1: week before he died, came through, but we were the
Speaker 1: opening act and that's where we sort of learned, I
Speaker 1: call it. That's where we went to craft craft right
Speaker 1: there in the bar area. That's why I love the
Speaker 1: bury I lived, and he never came to He came
Speaker 1: to Buryer, but he never liked it. I lived there
Speaker 1: for fourteen years, just me, and when he came he said,
Speaker 1: I go back to l A. I can't. It's it's
Speaker 1: it's very much. I love love, our hate place. It's
Speaker 1: no in between. Yeah, it completely what I learned that
Speaker 1: I didn't know when I left the l A like
Speaker 1: they called me a hustler. But in Oakland, as you
Speaker 1: will know, you better have a hustle. You got you
Speaker 1: my friends. Wasn't about going to church on Sunday and
Speaker 1: the families standing that all day. Up in Oakland. Everybody
Speaker 1: had some other way to make some kind of money.
Speaker 1: So that's where I was for fourteen years. When he
Speaker 1: came up there, he's an I need to go back
Speaker 1: to ros Yea. Yeah. Yeah, so that's where. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: why I said, The Barrier really made us because we
Speaker 1: learned our craft in the Bay Area. Everything that before
Speaker 1: we went on the road and all that. It all
Speaker 1: started Oakland Bachman Sava the Barrier, so we slide to
Speaker 1: his credit. In Los Angeles was such a big metropolis.
Speaker 1: If you didn't have a hit record, you couldn't get
Speaker 1: on the radio. Sly Stone was the biggest jock in
Speaker 1: the Bay Area. If he liked it, you got a shot.
Speaker 1: And he heard our song and put it on the
Speaker 1: radio station. And that's how we really got our start.
Speaker 1: We had to come back to Los Angeles to be
Speaker 1: kind of these are the whispers. They kind of kind
Speaker 1: of hit but they thought we were from the bait,
Speaker 1: but we originated from We just couldn't get on the air.
Speaker 1: And I'm flat out. My father told me from my
Speaker 1: whole life, Yeah, they know we are from the bar
Speaker 1: you know, so my whole you know the worst. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Well let's you know what is the guy that today
Speaker 1: runs our situation. Name is Alonso Award. Your father knew
Speaker 1: the Ward Brothers. The Ward Brothers they ran to the Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what you had to get, that's what that's exactly.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm talking about. That's what the movie
Speaker 1: that's where based on them. That's exactly they ran Oakland
Speaker 1: in terms of you want to be a hustler and
Speaker 1: a good hustler. Yeah, and them and your dad were
Speaker 1: great friends, you know, and they gave us they kind
Speaker 1: of let it. They gave us the acceptance. We did
Speaker 1: a talent show and the Ward Brothers were there and
Speaker 1: by them applauding for us, that put us on the map.
Speaker 1: And wow, hustlers we end up making Olivia Lawson turned out.
Speaker 1: That's what that was about. Yeah, Yeah, that's what that
Speaker 1: was about. She was on our worthy grandmother's house. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you understand. Yeah, completely. It's so interesting because I'm always asked,
Speaker 1: you know, my inspirations and what how did I learn
Speaker 1: how to sing? And you know, it's and I think
Speaker 1: Tank and I we we we messed so great because
Speaker 1: it's it's R and B music from two different sides.
Speaker 1: Mine is his church, his his church, mind his Catillac.
Speaker 1: That's the best way to and most people don't understand
Speaker 1: the Cadillac side of music. Everybody usually goes towards oh,
Speaker 1: you came from a church. Yeah, I'm like, oh, there's
Speaker 1: a whole another side, there's just pure there's hustlers who
Speaker 1: just love music. And literally our vocal coaches as a
Speaker 1: kid were all my father's pen friends and exactly you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. That just guys who played in
Speaker 1: the band, but they you know, they played a whole
Speaker 1: another game for us. What we grew up on was
Speaker 1: the del Phonics and the Whispers and you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. And in all of these groups, Blue Magic,
Speaker 1: all these groups that really we're singing about the game
Speaker 1: that you listen to, those lyrics, those lyrics are completely
Speaker 1: about absolutely gag. So you guys, music always just connected
Speaker 1: to me the most because I'm just like this literally
Speaker 1: is what I see every single day, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean? Man, And just even the way that it
Speaker 1: was worded, yeah, just it was special that we lost
Speaker 1: him into sixteen. But he wrote, like you said about
Speaker 1: the streets, yea, And we sung it as simple as that,
Speaker 1: I don't know those ladies, Yeah, yeah, they want to
Speaker 1: do this. That the ladies to the utmost that and
Speaker 1: everything to him. He said to us, if we respect
Speaker 1: our mothers and sisters and our wives, ladies, you can't
Speaker 1: miss And that's what we did. Lady was the biggest
Speaker 1: ballot that we ever had, you know, and today here
Speaker 1: we are, fifty six years later. I mean if you
Speaker 1: have told me. I mean y'all when you said you retired.
Speaker 1: When we heard that the day I had the pot,
Speaker 1: were looked at each other. We couldn't believe. I just
Speaker 1: wanted to try some other qualify And I tell you saying,
Speaker 1: I'm glad you're back, thank you. I mean, you have
Speaker 1: an incredible that people here, that gift, you know. I
Speaker 1: mean you said something earlier, the combination between you two.
Speaker 1: When I saw the Soul Train Awards, I'm like, what
Speaker 1: where the hell is that song come from? And the
Speaker 1: you know, back and forth were sitting laving in bed
Speaker 1: watching the show and I said, we gotta can find
Speaker 1: that on and then we played it because you know,
Speaker 1: I know you you had to do the g version. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well we're riding down and we're like, where the hell
Speaker 1: is that When we talk about let's let's say we
Speaker 1: can find it really exists, We're trying to figure it
Speaker 1: out a rehearsal, like wait, so, which which one is
Speaker 1: the sec You know, it's funny because you had that song.
Speaker 1: When we put out a song, we had a song
Speaker 1: called piste off, and we were going to do it
Speaker 1: on Soul Train Route teen all that stuff. It was
Speaker 1: laid out Nicholas Carwell with his root tine the song
Speaker 1: was and so we sung the song down one of
Speaker 1: the first time this cut cut um uh that that
Speaker 1: were piste off, say that you made the title or something,
Speaker 1: the reason you called us, the reason you called us right,
Speaker 1: and so we had to they had to bleep out
Speaker 1: piste off. We also changed and we had to change.
Speaker 1: The song of the vigion was called piste off. What
Speaker 1: year is this? Oh God, it's kind of be like
Speaker 1: in the nineties. Run was no, but we changed it.
Speaker 1: The baby come back we had We had to change
Speaker 1: the baby come back because they would come back, don't leave,
Speaker 1: but was piste off. That's gotta that's gotta go. But
Speaker 1: we just gotta can you change the old situation? But
Speaker 1: the point is back then today today that yeah, thats
Speaker 1: the off. Yeah, piss the funk off, Single Man Mother
Speaker 1: streaming on all platforms exactly, on every radio stage. That
Speaker 1: just goes, y'all fun along, we come back, go back,
Speaker 1: you you you win, you win, you want and then
Speaker 1: you you gave these other three guys an opportunity to
Speaker 1: join the winners, the winner circle. When did you get
Speaker 1: to a point where somebody put some real paperwork and
Speaker 1: wanted to have a real conversation with you? Like? How
Speaker 1: come long did that take between you guys doing talent
Speaker 1: shows to you guys getting to that office and then
Speaker 1: about five years and then the real monumental change came
Speaker 1: when I went to a Courtis Mayfield concert and met
Speaker 1: Dick Griffy shout. That's when it happened. A big guy
Speaker 1: who looked like a professional football player. You guys know what.
Speaker 1: Dick looked like. Him and my father friend, they were friends, right,
Speaker 1: And he walked up to me. My wife and I
Speaker 1: were at the concert after it was over, and he
Speaker 1: walked up to me. He said, listen, I can make
Speaker 1: you guys a big, big group. He said, you remind
Speaker 1: me a lot of Ladders Night and the Pips, But
Speaker 1: I think he can be better. Well, I looked at him.
Speaker 1: He looked like a football player. And we had heard
Speaker 1: this every time we get around people of influence. They
Speaker 1: would say, man, y'all need to let me do something
Speaker 1: with you. But it never happened. He begged me. We
Speaker 1: actually we met for three different occasions before I would
Speaker 1: bring him in for the whispers because I didn't know.
Speaker 1: I really didn't know. I don't know, bullshit into or what.
Speaker 1: But he was serious. So about a month later, now
Speaker 1: about six months later, we met in my cousin's garage
Speaker 1: with Dick Griffy right here in Los Angeles, and he said,
Speaker 1: I want to be your manager. And the question is answered,
Speaker 1: when what you said? That's when we he was our manager.
Speaker 1: We didn't really have a record company, but he managed
Speaker 1: us to go up against labels and have discussion. So
Speaker 1: he didn't have so lord. This time he was he
Speaker 1: was a promoter. He Don Coneius put black acts that
Speaker 1: you now see the day that had never been heard
Speaker 1: on television and did Griffy promoted them. He was the
Speaker 1: biggest black promoter in the United States. He would take
Speaker 1: these his first He's the first one that took Stevie
Speaker 1: Worst Country too. And then he also, I didn't know
Speaker 1: that's how he came into the business. Yeah, yeah, And
Speaker 1: then he and Don hooked up. They basically said I
Speaker 1: have the television and you promoting, so let's They created
Speaker 1: Soul Trained Records. And now we get into the controversy.
Speaker 1: These two men to the most brilliant guys that I've
Speaker 1: ever met in my life. They couldn't get along. I
Speaker 1: can see that. I can see that to this day. Man.
Speaker 1: We we said, had these two guys been like Berry
Speaker 1: Gordy and had a little less ego to get along,
Speaker 1: they'd have been the biggest black entrepreneurs. They'd have been
Speaker 1: the jay z of the day. Don had television, he
Speaker 1: had the ability to promote acts over the country, so
Speaker 1: between the two of them, they would have had it
Speaker 1: locked up. But they couldn't get so they started Soul
Speaker 1: Trained Records together. They started so it was Don's Dick
Speaker 1: came up with the name and Don liked it and
Speaker 1: it became Old Trained Records. But maybe three or four
Speaker 1: years into it, they clashed and you guys are signed
Speaker 1: to Soldier Record. At the signing, we're the first act
Speaker 1: signed to Soul Train Records. We went on the road
Speaker 1: one day, came back the next and Locks was on
Speaker 1: bad Locks was on the record company. Because because they
Speaker 1: fell out, they felt normal record company it was gone.
Speaker 1: Just like all the acts that they had. Don felt
Speaker 1: that his television career was It was kind of ingevity
Speaker 1: with Dick. Dick was like your father. They were a
Speaker 1: great friend. Dick was a hustler, but a good but
Speaker 1: a brilliant hustler. Guy went to the Navy, could have
Speaker 1: went to Annapolis, that's how smart he was. Chose to
Speaker 1: be a hustler. Don feared that he didn't like his
Speaker 1: television thing being associated, so they parted ways to Street.
Speaker 1: But just think had they put it, had they kept
Speaker 1: it together, can you imagine that? That's exactly because you
Speaker 1: said he was too street. The potential is just scary.
Speaker 1: It could have happened. But what we learned from that,
Speaker 1: sometimes when it ain't meant to be, they meant to be.
Speaker 1: How good they should have been the giants they could
Speaker 1: have been the first black presidents is for as unconcerned.
Speaker 1: But and then the other lesson that was learned is
Speaker 1: how dangerous that ego is, because that's all it destroyed. It.
Speaker 1: Ego messed up other young acts the black community. They
Speaker 1: could have ruled the whole black community. But again ego
Speaker 1: stepped in. Good sense stepped out. But the good part
Speaker 1: about it is that with Di Griffy, even when they
Speaker 1: were going through their thing, there was never any fear
Speaker 1: for the whispers because the Griffy's we had so much
Speaker 1: confidence and who he was. He was a hustler and
Speaker 1: you knew if he said he was going to do something,
Speaker 1: he was was done. He says, don't worry about cohost.
Speaker 1: I'm form a new company. It's gonna be call Solo Records.
Speaker 1: You're gonna be my first artist on that label. And
Speaker 1: he put the energy and went out and found producers
Speaker 1: like the Leon Silvers of the industry and put them
Speaker 1: with He says, I want to I want to shake
Speaker 1: this like like the Motown world Motown. And he put
Speaker 1: it together and got writers after writers after writers, and
Speaker 1: you know, his ability, his A and our ability was incredible.
Speaker 1: Dick Griffy was in A and our genius. So he
Speaker 1: would sit down, we would listen to songs. He says, yeah,
Speaker 1: this song is a song would be good for you.
Speaker 1: And so when we did our first first project with him,
Speaker 1: you know, he wanted to take up all the songs.
Speaker 1: He said, Now you know, you know Nigga's got enough
Speaker 1: hits right there, So enough for y'all. I gotta spread
Speaker 1: this wealth to other groups like you know, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: well let me give you I tell you a lot
Speaker 1: of people didn't realize, like Leville said, he was a
Speaker 1: great A and R guy. To give you an example
Speaker 1: of how nobody would never notice. Let's take the Lakeside
Speaker 1: song Fantasist boards. You know the raptors in there, they
Speaker 1: take a long okay, that was in the middle of
Speaker 1: the song. Did griefly said, hey, take the that there
Speaker 1: and open your song up with that. With that, open
Speaker 1: it with nobody with and even then said, man, you
Speaker 1: don't know what you're talking about. But he was the president.
Speaker 1: He said, take that rap. Put it in front the
Speaker 1: biggest record they ever had. Just like he told the deal,
Speaker 1: y'all gonna let baby Face sing? Okay, Still baby Face
Speaker 1: came to us and said, man, the deal don't like
Speaker 1: none of my songs, said everything I right. None of
Speaker 1: the deal wanted to be prince they had when you
Speaker 1: hear two occasions my my mind, you know, in the
Speaker 1: mood they didn't want they didn't like none of them songs.
Speaker 1: We were down in Atlanta at they didn't want to
Speaker 1: hear none of them. Facing l A who at the
Speaker 1: time was was Kenny Edmonds and l A Read. They
Speaker 1: weren't at that time submitted those songs. We heard them.
Speaker 1: We went crazy. He was. We told baby Fat, you
Speaker 1: were meant to write for us. He said, I'm so
Speaker 1: glad because my group they don't want. But now you said,
Speaker 1: you guys remember the right. In all fairness to them,
Speaker 1: he's saying that, and I agree with it. He send it.
Speaker 1: I don't think that they didn't want him, that they
Speaker 1: were young imps for then they didn't want to be
Speaker 1: whisper want group nothing personally, ain't nothing. But that's not
Speaker 1: But we don't want. We don't want to be that.
Speaker 1: We that young guy with that he ringing is here
Speaker 1: and the girls are going crazy. That's who we want
Speaker 1: to be. But what we understood, we knew the one
Speaker 1: thing we've always knew. We knew what we could do,
Speaker 1: and that's it. Don't be trying to be something you're not.
Speaker 1: We know we can't wrap it. You ain't never heard
Speaker 1: us try to rap because we know what that don't
Speaker 1: mean if we don't like it. But we understood what
Speaker 1: baby face he was hearing what we actually could do.
Speaker 1: And when we heard that music, we say, man, and
Speaker 1: we took it to Dick. As a matter of fact,
Speaker 1: to show you, we actually tried to sign him. We
Speaker 1: had a company called black Dad. We wanted to sign preference.
Speaker 1: No no, you can't. No, no, you can have the song,
Speaker 1: but I won't. Hill. Well, just like leg Side was
Speaker 1: signed the Midnight Star, that was their act. Y'all know
Speaker 1: how that works. Yeah, that's the thing. I'm sorry. The
Speaker 1: deal was, yes, exactly, broke his first his first two occasions.
Speaker 1: No, no no, no, the house direct Yeah, absolutely, all of
Speaker 1: these things are under one umbrella. Here's a difference. What
Speaker 1: I always called the hustle mentality that I favor because
Speaker 1: Dick was a hustler. He gave the acts the freedom. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, Barry Gordy worked in Detroit for the motor
Speaker 1: industry and he was a more kind of structured. The
Speaker 1: difference between Berry Gordy and Dick GRIFFI both bringing in
Speaker 1: their own way. But I always say that Dick brought
Speaker 1: the hustler mentality to music in relating to younger acts
Speaker 1: because he was from the street. He would give you
Speaker 1: the opportunity to come and explain to him what you
Speaker 1: were trying to do with the song. Leon Silvers was
Speaker 1: in his prime, he was beginning to be who he
Speaker 1: would become as a producer, and man, Dick will sit
Speaker 1: there and listen to you all night Berry. Gordy on
Speaker 1: the other hand, if you know, Motown had great stars,
Speaker 1: but you know the story they brought what's going on,
Speaker 1: and he didn't want to put it out. He was
Speaker 1: like my mother told us, that's a little too. That
Speaker 1: was the key difference. He was going with the formula.
Speaker 1: He was going with the formula because he came like
Speaker 1: us from that earlier generation. That didn't make him that
Speaker 1: daring that you guys were daring so so great about
Speaker 1: what y'all did, because but but we all know that
Speaker 1: Moretown is what it is and his storically speaking, it's
Speaker 1: the greatest black record company there ever was. But dig
Speaker 1: Griffy that was that's what he was trying to imitate.
Speaker 1: Was very Gordy. But we had this stable baby face
Speaker 1: Leon Midnight Star, Uh Dynasty Shalamar like this little company
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles, as y'all know, was to become everywhere
Speaker 1: somebody somebody has to do a story, yeah, because because
Speaker 1: it's just it's just crazy because Leon Silver's they think
Speaker 1: everything was written by Leon Silver's the earlier hits were.
Speaker 1: But Leon was smart enough to say, I'm gonna get
Speaker 1: a staff of writers that are hungry. And what I'll
Speaker 1: do is I'll a and r there stuff and add
Speaker 1: my little flavor to it, like almost like a school
Speaker 1: for writers. And he would, I mean, just because you
Speaker 1: wanted the Leon Silver's records. If if he was attached
Speaker 1: to it, he was attached to it. It wasubilate and
Speaker 1: he and he gave them the freedom too, because I mean,
Speaker 1: he came with some stuff. I remember we did a
Speaker 1: song and they're looking back at it was the funniest
Speaker 1: thing in the world. He gave. He gave to Scott
Speaker 1: He says, okay, said I want you to say, you know,
Speaker 1: I want you to do your scat. You know you
Speaker 1: want and I want you to say and you know
Speaker 1: what that means, hey, Scotti, let that mean? And then
Speaker 1: you know, after he did a scat and guys like, man,
Speaker 1: I ain't doing that. That's the craziest thing. What were
Speaker 1: you talking about? Wind up being one of the biggest
Speaker 1: songs that we had. But that was the genius of him.
Speaker 1: He said, I'm gonna find a way to you, Scotty Scatt.
Speaker 1: Where most people ran away from it, he found a
Speaker 1: way to embrace it. And the same thing with and
Speaker 1: be goes on. Leon silver has had a way that
Speaker 1: when he was in the studio with you, because at
Speaker 1: that time he didn't have a drummer, so he would
Speaker 1: get on his knees and just hit the base drum
Speaker 1: with basically hit the bass drump. He had a little mallet.
Speaker 1: Boom boom boom. Did he do that? Then he would
Speaker 1: get the snare and then he would do the SnO,
Speaker 1: he was in the tem he had it in his head.
Speaker 1: He wasn't a drummer, but he had in his head.
Speaker 1: And when he finished, when he finished one, we saw
Speaker 1: it from the bass drum up and then the things
Speaker 1: that he did was amazing about him. And I'm a
Speaker 1: witness to it because what he asked me to do,
Speaker 1: because I didn't know the finished product, I thought it
Speaker 1: was crazy. So I'm fighting with my guys about doing
Speaker 1: it that something I'm not doing that? What you mean?
Speaker 1: What that? What does that mean? So you know, but
Speaker 1: what he would end up doing because he knew the end,
Speaker 1: what was going in and when we heard Man, when
Speaker 1: we finished and the beagles on, we knew that like
Speaker 1: thank god we had our first. One of the fund
Speaker 1: things we love we love to ask is like your
Speaker 1: your your your feelings after your first hit record, your
Speaker 1: your movements after your first hit record? What did you
Speaker 1: what did you buy? I'm glad you asked this, Chris,
Speaker 1: because we get this. We get asked this a lot,
Speaker 1: and we have you get three difference first of all,
Speaker 1: and this is the most young people that need to
Speaker 1: understand that. This shows you how one record can change
Speaker 1: your life completely. We went from I went from being
Speaker 1: able to get my clothes out of the cleanness to
Speaker 1: not having to be able to put them in the
Speaker 1: cleaners if you could. I don't know if that makes
Speaker 1: any sense to you, but we went Our lives changed completely.
Speaker 1: One day you over here and then next day you
Speaker 1: way over here. And for you Squares, that means that
Speaker 1: he didn't have to wear the same thing twice. I
Speaker 1: can finally give myself out of the famers. But and
Speaker 1: the beat goes on. Now. We did know the night
Speaker 1: that we finished it that it was our first year record.
Speaker 1: What we didn't know it's how our lives were gonna
Speaker 1: change because from that point on, and answer to your question,
Speaker 1: from nineteen eighty to nineteen eighties seven, everything we had
Speaker 1: was either platinum or go yeah, talk about it, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Records I'm not even trying to crack the rip. I'm
Speaker 1: just telling you, honest god truth. But to go from
Speaker 1: what you said, like from from poor to that, I
Speaker 1: can't even think of a word to describe how great
Speaker 1: it was. You asked me, what did we bout like?
Speaker 1: I remember, I went, I shouldn't even be seeing it,
Speaker 1: that's the truth. I wouldn't bought Mercedes, and I took
Speaker 1: the money out of my foot get it, yeah, put
Speaker 1: it into you didn't believe check from you asked me
Speaker 1: he was a walking band, would not put his money
Speaker 1: and I would not put My mother used to say food,
Speaker 1: do you know what exactly? Do you know what the
Speaker 1: bank is? Yeah? Yeah, mama, But I trust the bank,
Speaker 1: you know. And I as an Oakland hustle, I wasn't
Speaker 1: only one up in old we all mentality. Everybody had that.
Speaker 1: But any when I when I wasn't bought my first Mercedes,
Speaker 1: they thought I was a drug dealer because I had
Speaker 1: all the cash, and I guess said, sir, let's sir, uh,
Speaker 1: we need to check check. I know how about you
Speaker 1: would cost thirty seven thousand, three hunds something. But I
Speaker 1: had all the money on me. So but again that's
Speaker 1: what we went. That's what the hit record did from
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty seven, Lordship Thank You. The funny part is
Speaker 1: what happened to me was once my first purchase was
Speaker 1: a nine eleven ninety Porsche. And it was funny because
Speaker 1: I went to the dealership to get this portion and
Speaker 1: I'm standing there and nobody's helping me. They're just looking
Speaker 1: at there, and I'm welcome at this Porsche that's on
Speaker 1: the floor, and I'm saying, man, this is so bad. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the anthracite gray wheels everything I wanted. And I stood
Speaker 1: there in that place for about forty five minutes before
Speaker 1: anybody say anything to you. Nobody said nothing to me,
Speaker 1: So I decided I'm gonna leave. You know, I'm piste
Speaker 1: off now. So I'm walking out about this time. There's
Speaker 1: another sales just coming on shift. He says, uh, can
Speaker 1: I help you? I said yeah, I said, because obviously
Speaker 1: nobody in there who wants my money. He said, what
Speaker 1: do you What are you here for? I said, I
Speaker 1: like to buy that seventy nine thirty on the showing
Speaker 1: floor there. He says, really, I said yeah. He says, well,
Speaker 1: what can I do? I said, well, I wanna pay
Speaker 1: cash for it. I want that car, so can you
Speaker 1: here's five thousand dollars. I'll be back with cash your
Speaker 1: check for it. Because I didn't do the check in
Speaker 1: and savings. I didn't do that. Yeah, I didn't do
Speaker 1: the leg and so I bought that car. And I
Speaker 1: think walk you were in the store. You went in
Speaker 1: the store and some guy told him, says, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: well I just sold this to this guy who sings
Speaker 1: with the whispers and he says his name was. He said, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's all I sold it to. So I learned my
Speaker 1: lesson from See, he kept us in the left and
Speaker 1: right leg. Nick would keep his in his drawls. He
Speaker 1: slept with his money in his drawers. That's stopped after
Speaker 1: Nick went and sat down on the toilet in the
Speaker 1: middle of the night, and god, he had his money
Speaker 1: in the draws and pulled his pants down and flushed
Speaker 1: the toilet and everything. He too much money, didn't know
Speaker 1: what to do with it. He flushed and he flushed
Speaker 1: this all this money down the toilet and he went
Speaker 1: running down to the front catch tanker. That's some way
Speaker 1: you where, because I'm willing to go in. That was
Speaker 1: the last time he put his money in his draws.
Speaker 1: That's how crazy things were back in the day. We
Speaker 1: just got too much money. He that was the second
Speaker 1: thing he did. The first thing he did me and
Speaker 1: him was blowing my mom my house. Yeah, that's the
Speaker 1: first thing him for any cause and all that he
Speaker 1: went down there later with it. My mom couldn't believe it.
Speaker 1: But that was the greatest feeling in the world world
Speaker 1: to go by your parents. They're here. My dad had
Speaker 1: passed by then, but man, you tell me how to
Speaker 1: this day, I just think about it, and I just
Speaker 1: get happy because we we had been around. This is
Speaker 1: crazy in nineteen eighty. We had been around ten years
Speaker 1: before that. So we weren't that's the good thing that
Speaker 1: happened to us. We weren't young and foolish to the point.
Speaker 1: We had been striving for ten years. So when they
Speaker 1: finally happened, even though they bought the cars, mostly we
Speaker 1: did some sensible things with it. And you didn't get
Speaker 1: you didn't know. I got it later. But the first
Speaker 1: thing I wanted to do is see my mama smile.
Speaker 1: You know. Yeah, that's that's that's what. Here's the question.
Speaker 1: Is it pertains to business? Um, just so we can
Speaker 1: get some more information out there. How did you feel
Speaker 1: about looking back on it, the structure of your business
Speaker 1: at the time, like in terms of the fairness or
Speaker 1: the unfairness of it, or the things that were just
Speaker 1: so glad out of control that you know, should have
Speaker 1: been a certain way and weren't. Like what was happening
Speaker 1: at that time. It was structured to a point where
Speaker 1: you were only meant to go so far. As a
Speaker 1: black artist, you know that the structure of the business
Speaker 1: was made was was made too. You come into a
Speaker 1: record company, they signed you to a deal and depending
Speaker 1: on who you are, the cloth that you had before
Speaker 1: you got there, you might get eight points as an artist.
Speaker 1: Eight that's crazy and it eight points. Then Stevie came along,
Speaker 1: you know, with his success that in Motown, and he
Speaker 1: was a writer, producer and he could talk about owning
Speaker 1: all of this stuff. But in our era, you were
Speaker 1: just trying to get the exposure. You would do anything,
Speaker 1: and it limited you just were limited. You couldn't get
Speaker 1: but only so far, you know. Uh, as especially as
Speaker 1: a young black stand up vocal groups, stand up vocal
Speaker 1: groups were they were always afraid that them five guys
Speaker 1: might mess with some white women. So they were they were.
Speaker 1: They were things that happened with the temptations in the
Speaker 1: Four Tops. And you know, traveling through the South had
Speaker 1: to be careful because you represented, here's five good looking
Speaker 1: black man standing up doing and young girls invariably gonna
Speaker 1: come in. You know, they're gonna like so you know,
Speaker 1: so you were just limited in terms of your ability.
Speaker 1: And then it depends on behind intelligent you were. You know,
Speaker 1: if you were, did you understand do you know about
Speaker 1: publishing copyrights? No, we were young. We just wanted to
Speaker 1: be on stage. We wanted the girls the screen. We
Speaker 1: didn't learn about that. Dick Griffey was the guy that
Speaker 1: educated us about publishing. You know, Nick was our only writer.
Speaker 1: But we understand, we didn't understand publishing the way you
Speaker 1: guys did. And even you know, writers weren't compensated with
Speaker 1: the way they should have been to this day. But
Speaker 1: the but here's the ratio. If a hundred million was
Speaker 1: made back then, you actually, well, how much of that
Speaker 1: should I get from a fair standpoint? But you were lucky.
Speaker 1: If a hundred me was made, you might get to
Speaker 1: three thousand maybe dollars. That's that's if a hundred million
Speaker 1: is generated. You now today you know what records generating.
Speaker 1: We're talking hundreds of millions. If you're not even knowing
Speaker 1: what you didn't have a clue of what that was.
Speaker 1: You didn't know what it was when you say no,
Speaker 1: we didn't know what was generated. Because I mean, first
Speaker 1: of all, back then, even now, when you see a
Speaker 1: hunting me didn't make me faint. I don't know about you,
Speaker 1: But back then, not only would you faint, you may
Speaker 1: not ever fucking wake up a hundred million dollars. Nobody
Speaker 1: ever dreamed that kind of bunny was being even made.
Speaker 1: You know, but then you're going along with the obedience
Speaker 1: of being a black person that comes into play, whether
Speaker 1: you would you know, so you didn't even get to
Speaker 1: what like, well, we never got to that. No, No,
Speaker 1: I don't know. You know, you stayed in your place,
Speaker 1: and you know you did what you were supposed to.
Speaker 1: You were obedient. Let's put it like you're happy with
Speaker 1: a little happy with a little one. So Huney bellion
Speaker 1: was genuine. You wouldn't have probably believed it anyway anyway,
Speaker 1: because those numbers don't even make sense, don't make sense,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, that's why we say the young people today.
Speaker 1: But we don't have to because young people like you,
Speaker 1: you understand a huney million dollars don't mean that much
Speaker 1: to you. It's a lot of money, but you understand
Speaker 1: what a hundred million dollars is. In our day, we
Speaker 1: had no clue, no clue what a hundre million dollars.
Speaker 1: I don't even you don't think about that, you know,
Speaker 1: y'all do. I remember having a conversation with my with
Speaker 1: with my father and couples, guys and uncles, and they
Speaker 1: were talking about sports and how they used to look
Speaker 1: at athletes and they used to be like, that's they
Speaker 1: ain't got no money like us. Absolutely, they used to
Speaker 1: really look at like you know, because it was just
Speaker 1: a different time. It was a different time, and you
Speaker 1: know what guys were getting in the streets compared to
Speaker 1: you know what guys were getting legally. Absolutely, you know
Speaker 1: that at one point that was the way to get rich, absolutely,
Speaker 1: to get really rich. Absolutely, it was more so in
Speaker 1: a in a legal way. Absolutely, we didn't have all
Speaker 1: of these ways, you know from now with music or
Speaker 1: with acting, or with you know, with sports sponsorships and
Speaker 1: you know all these other things that that all the
Speaker 1: ancillary things that come along with it. Now, before it
Speaker 1: was just like oh yeah, if you want that Cadillac,
Speaker 1: nobody get to house. Absolutely, so I completely, I completely
Speaker 1: understand what you're saying. I also want to know, from
Speaker 1: the road sense, how did that work because obviously you know,
Speaker 1: you have you have the you have the deal structures,
Speaker 1: and you have the way that that works out. Like
Speaker 1: you said, you were lucky if you're getting eight points
Speaker 1: with most people don't understand the eight points breaks down
Speaker 1: to eight cents pennies, you know what I mean because
Speaker 1: a lot of people, you know, they they've made all
Speaker 1: of these terms, you know what I mean that where
Speaker 1: you know, you don't really just look into it. You're like,
Speaker 1: you can, you can. I mean the sad thing is
Speaker 1: you can have a conversation with some of the artists
Speaker 1: that are out now and they don't even know what
Speaker 1: that breaks down to, even with all of this information. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the sad part. Now, Like like Tanks said earlier,
Speaker 1: we we we listened to you guys with grace and
Speaker 1: at a different you know, it's the scales are tipped
Speaker 1: in a different way because you guys had no idea.
Speaker 1: There was no way to truly find out. And to
Speaker 1: our fault, we weren't educated enough to know that to
Speaker 1: ask the question, if there's a hundred pennies and the
Speaker 1: eight is gone, what happens to the other ninety two?
Speaker 1: That's common sense. But when you want to be on
Speaker 1: stage and you want the exposure, the business was built
Speaker 1: on that, That's what I'm talking. The business was on
Speaker 1: the sexy of that. They just want to say, They
Speaker 1: just want to they just want to sing to them
Speaker 1: girls after the show as well, worried they want a
Speaker 1: little wine, a little woman, right, Yeah, yeah, maybe the
Speaker 1: don't taste. Yeah, they manipulated and in such a way
Speaker 1: because you know, the gifted are very much invested in
Speaker 1: the gift. We're very much invested in the gift. Like
Speaker 1: we're always trying to figure out how to be better
Speaker 1: within our gift. At no point do we stop and say,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying, well, let's talk about those
Speaker 1: eight points, because sometimes the math doesn't correlate with the gift.
Speaker 1: You know, we just we just I'm just here the thing.
Speaker 1: But you know what I'm saying, we're gonna pick Okay,
Speaker 1: you gotta are you gonna pick that up about exactly
Speaker 1: exactly there for us. And even in the beginning of
Speaker 1: my career, like the things that I could have done
Speaker 1: with my early success, I didn't know to do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: nobody showed me, nobody telling me. Yeah, nobody was like,
Speaker 1: now with this, since you have a top three record
Speaker 1: on the Hot one hundred, this is what you should
Speaker 1: go ask what and what you should turn that as
Speaker 1: exactly and then now you can be your own. But
Speaker 1: you know the advantageous I went on the business side
Speaker 1: to tell you that I was still being conditioned to
Speaker 1: to be a player. Yeah, I was being conditioned to
Speaker 1: stay a player. We want you to be the best
Speaker 1: player you can be. Yeah, but you gotta stay on
Speaker 1: the team. You look, you look at the way that
Speaker 1: like I said, we go back to the terms, We
Speaker 1: go back to just even the way it was worded,
Speaker 1: the masters slave. People don't even know about that. And
Speaker 1: then and then the owner, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: So if you if you're looking at music, they put
Speaker 1: it right in front of But this thing is do
Speaker 1: you own your masters? You know what I mean? And
Speaker 1: there's I mean, there's a quote that I put on
Speaker 1: on one of my pages that says, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: we we own our own masters, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: The masters don't own us. That's right, and that's something
Speaker 1: that you know, at one point we had to make
Speaker 1: that decision for ourselves. And if you look at it
Speaker 1: from that standpoint, you will approach it differently. That's right.
Speaker 1: If you look at it like, Okay, if they own
Speaker 1: my masters, they own me absolutely. I don't think you
Speaker 1: would thank you or give them up as fast. But
Speaker 1: I don't think that that's ever though. That's never really
Speaker 1: put in front of someone to make that decision. Even
Speaker 1: beyond that, even when we went on the road and thinking,
Speaker 1: you get the test of this because we've all gone
Speaker 1: through the same things. You go on the road, you
Speaker 1: make all of this money as long as your socket
Speaker 1: is for right soccer literally. But the other side of
Speaker 1: it is that we weren't given the tools to sit
Speaker 1: down at We never had a dinner table where the
Speaker 1: whole family sits down and your dad says, you know,
Speaker 1: you should put your money into this stock, or you
Speaker 1: should not necessarily go out there and buy them gold
Speaker 1: chains and cars and and that kind of stuff. Maybe
Speaker 1: before you even buy a house, because the house is
Speaker 1: the worst investment. Maybe you need to go out there
Speaker 1: and buy you a bunch of apartment buildings or or
Speaker 1: or buy you a shopping center or or something like
Speaker 1: a parking something where you can have residual income coming in.
Speaker 1: We didn't have those conversations, so we were actually not
Speaker 1: knowing what to do with our money. So what we
Speaker 1: do is we pop bottles, the gold chains, we had
Speaker 1: the cars, We get a house, We bang a bunch
Speaker 1: of girls, and then get caught up with ye yeah,
Speaker 1: what else did you do? But they excited excignment don't
Speaker 1: last long when you're married and the wife find out,
Speaker 1: oh ship on that half, they get ahead and they
Speaker 1: get at a moment exactly. So then you want end
Speaker 1: up saying, damn, I suked up really bad, you know.
Speaker 1: And so if you get that second chance, which a
Speaker 1: lot of people don't get, to reboot yourself and start again,
Speaker 1: that your hundred times. If you get that second chance,
Speaker 1: you don't do things. You know what I'm saying. That's
Speaker 1: that's what I was asking about this the road. Ah
Speaker 1: And and when you guys get this this records are
Speaker 1: these records because you guys have multiple records. It's not
Speaker 1: like just the one record. We can go down the
Speaker 1: list how is that? Is it connected or is it
Speaker 1: separate at that point because you know now they'll even
Speaker 1: try to get a piece of your performance. So back
Speaker 1: then it was completely separately, not thinking about the other
Speaker 1: side of your business because you're and that's why I asked,
Speaker 1: you're doing sellout business in the countin and separate and
Speaker 1: apart from royalties and publishing two different sets of income.
Speaker 1: And as you say, when you're selling out fifteen thousand caters,
Speaker 1: Luther at his height was going I mean, he was
Speaker 1: with CBS, selling plenty of records, but I guarantee it
Speaker 1: was separate and apart. In our case, it definitely was.
Speaker 1: They didn't. They didn't associate the two with each other.
Speaker 1: You just we did that because you were just And
Speaker 1: then you get a royal statement and that's when you
Speaker 1: start argument and they even got to have money off
Speaker 1: the road some lawyers, but from the road, as you say,
Speaker 1: you start arguing. They never gave me a chance to
Speaker 1: argue because they never sent me a royalty statement. You
Speaker 1: never gotta wait. You gotta be getting in my first
Speaker 1: sale and those I didn't manage eight to two thousand dead,
Speaker 1: I saw one royalty. Are you kidding me? When we're
Speaker 1: talking about to day, I saw one. But he's seriously,
Speaker 1: at that time, I was just playing my game. I
Speaker 1: understand my time, So you were being blinded by that.
Speaker 1: But then the times where I wanted to ask those
Speaker 1: tough questions and I did things. You know what I'm
Speaker 1: saying that that that kind of you know, put me
Speaker 1: in a bad position. Um, you know, I really had
Speaker 1: to be smart about how I fought that battle because
Speaker 1: I don't have the money to fight it. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: And I didn't know if at the time, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, with the time that I had, I
Speaker 1: just need to focus on music. But when you got
Speaker 1: more money, got way more money, we got way more acts.
Speaker 1: They keep going, keep going in that lower yourselfice. I
Speaker 1: got to focus on a record that's going to change
Speaker 1: the verbage, the negotiations. So I gotta focus on that.
Speaker 1: And that's what I did. Understandable. Yeah. Um, now we're
Speaker 1: talking about thirty five years later to think about that still,
Speaker 1: what are years later and this what's happening with us?
Speaker 1: And here we talked about forty years later. You went
Speaker 1: eight years and didn't see a royalty statement, So one
Speaker 1: that is amazing to me I've walked away from a
Speaker 1: lot of money as a means to an end, just
Speaker 1: so I can get to the other side, get to
Speaker 1: the next step, get to the next step. Wow, that's amazing,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. So, like, you know, it's
Speaker 1: funny because when people watch it or people see it,
Speaker 1: you know, they see the videos and all of these
Speaker 1: steps I say, they don't know, like, while some of
Speaker 1: these videos are out that you know, some of us
Speaker 1: are reaching in the ash tray, you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: digging out coins to put gas in. They don't realize that.
Speaker 1: And that was very much where I've been trying to
Speaker 1: get to the next moment. And the cost of that
Speaker 1: video was on the dotted line. Come come, that's what
Speaker 1: when you see you start arguing. But see I say
Speaker 1: this though in our case, we weren't educated, now that
Speaker 1: I understand it, we met my gardener, I manager now,
Speaker 1: and I thought I was a pretty educated guy. But
Speaker 1: I wouldn't because if you educated, you have a sense
Speaker 1: of being curious about what's happening to you. But when
Speaker 1: you're doing what we like, you we out there performing,
Speaker 1: the girls, having fun, and you don't want to look
Speaker 1: when they charge you for that video. You didn't even
Speaker 1: know he was being charged. You thought they were paying
Speaker 1: for it, because that's what you thought. You meet someone
Speaker 1: that explains to you how this is a business industry.
Speaker 1: It's called show, but it's business. And until you understand that,
Speaker 1: you're gonna be victimized by We certainly were. But I'm
Speaker 1: amazed that as younger as young as you are. Yeah,
Speaker 1: do you remember. I remember I was talking to one
Speaker 1: of the lakes side and he said to me, and
Speaker 1: it may sound funny, but it blow your mind. Man,
Speaker 1: how do you go on to and come home and
Speaker 1: be broke? Yeah, yeah, that's correct, that was happening, but
Speaker 1: that's what was happening. I've seen it. He we on
Speaker 1: to have played sold out. Remember we were laughing. We
Speaker 1: went to the record store. They they met these girls
Speaker 1: and they brought in the babies and all that. They
Speaker 1: called off the girls and their kids signing. You know,
Speaker 1: they had the limos and they had about five or
Speaker 1: six limos. Every limo there was paid for, record company
Speaker 1: paid for. Gladly didn't have no problem making you look good.
Speaker 1: But when you get back home that you yeah, you mad,
Speaker 1: this is what that's what your negative here And young kids.
Speaker 1: Y'all can thank God for y'all's podcast because you guys
Speaker 1: can explain this. Two young kids that are in this industry,
Speaker 1: you know, let they have to understand, be educated and
Speaker 1: nothing wrong with flying coach at nothing, nothing unless you're
Speaker 1: six six. Yeah, you're comfortable and the rel you know,
Speaker 1: it's the flights get further. You want to later? Yeah, Europe.
Speaker 1: You don't need to fly first class from San Francisco
Speaker 1: to Los Angeles. You're the play Wait things all sold out,
Speaker 1: I go tomorrow. Let's get to the minds man, Let's
Speaker 1: let's get to the r. You want to talk to
Speaker 1: this brother because they've been doing this a long time.
Speaker 1: You know, they got they got minds on them, got
Speaker 1: minds on the second of our show, Top five. Okay,
Speaker 1: I don't normally have to keep over this. Okay, today
Speaker 1: we're gonna we're gonna keep it simple. We want to
Speaker 1: know whispers whispers whispers your top five R and B
Speaker 1: artists M M male female group, five different us gonna
Speaker 1: say the same thing, but we're probably gonna we're prepared.
Speaker 1: It was your gree on and the next you. Okay,
Speaker 1: come on, let's just get it. Somebody kick it off.
Speaker 1: It's easy to me. It's easy. I start out with
Speaker 1: Donny Hathway, no question, go down from him. I go
Speaker 1: to Marvin gay After Marvin Gaye, I go to Jesse Belvin,
Speaker 1: and then I go to two females. That's fall as
Speaker 1: I'm concerned, and it's just me that I'm my all
Speaker 1: time favorite. One is white, one is black. The black
Speaker 1: one is as a James for me. The white one
Speaker 1: is carrying carpet. Yes, yeah, that' see what's going on.
Speaker 1: The two greatest female singers as far as I'm concerned,
Speaker 1: Ada and Caring. That's my father. Okay. Probably for me,
Speaker 1: I'm probably got a mixture of old school and new
Speaker 1: school um NK and Cole one of my greatest my mom,
Speaker 1: hipp you to this guy, Jackie Wilson, one of the
Speaker 1: greatest singers performers on planet Earth. Me being a tenor dey'll.
Speaker 1: Finally William Hart, one of my favorite tenor singers ever
Speaker 1: on this planet. That that I like female singer wise
Speaker 1: would be Many Rippington because she was singing in the
Speaker 1: stratosphere before any of these ladies came along. I knew
Speaker 1: there was a stratosphere, and the last one would be
Speaker 1: Marvin gay because I like where he comes from emotionally.
Speaker 1: I could always count on him to say something that
Speaker 1: will bring tears to your eyes. And I knew every
Speaker 1: masterful song that he came out with was based on
Speaker 1: whatever emotional thing that he was going through, So I
Speaker 1: could we've had broken hearts, somebody tore our hearts out
Speaker 1: of our chest, So he would have a song. Did
Speaker 1: you play that and just kind of sit in your
Speaker 1: own little pity session and listen to that song all
Speaker 1: the time. So Marvin get those would be you know,
Speaker 1: those would be my people. Scott did not have. We
Speaker 1: both Danny Hathaway, But I kind of put in mind
Speaker 1: the people that I revere the most. There's a combination
Speaker 1: of how will they could sing, but how great a
Speaker 1: writers they were? For me, Critis Mayfield the greatest black
Speaker 1: writer if you had the choice of colors, which when
Speaker 1: you choose my brother? When I heard that, um, I
Speaker 1: admire him for his He wasn't a great vocalist, but
Speaker 1: his writing ability made me Marvin Gaye just natural. Two
Speaker 1: greatest female singers to me that ever lived Aretha Franklin
Speaker 1: number one, especially the young area, and Whitney Whitney was
Speaker 1: God given. She just that thing that you saw she did.
Speaker 1: Did you look at her eyes when she was in
Speaker 1: that jogging suit, she was looking how amazed that we
Speaker 1: were amazed that she could do that. Didn't you see that?
Speaker 1: Because she did it so easy? She said, what what
Speaker 1: they what they're tripping about? That girl was so gifted
Speaker 1: to me. That's it for me. She just had to
Speaker 1: flap foot it just yeah, yeah, yeah, now that was
Speaker 1: less are amazing? Okay, okay, let's get another list, one
Speaker 1: another list on UM Top five R and B songs.
Speaker 1: You get tricking that's hard? That was that is hard? Well,
Speaker 1: Number one, What's going on? Kick it off? Kick it off? There?
Speaker 1: That's that's the one song that Marvin made that he
Speaker 1: brought in other people. They were having a good time.
Speaker 1: It just evolved into the greatest as far as I'm concerned.
Speaker 1: That song. My wife and I we danced to the
Speaker 1: whole album and Mom got so many different songs on there.
Speaker 1: But What's going On? It's one of my favorite songs
Speaker 1: of all time. And then Luther who the Bad Truths,
Speaker 1: has a song called what is the title of it?
Speaker 1: His vocal gymnastics to me, I ain't heard nobody. What
Speaker 1: is the song I'm thinking up? The hit, the hit record,
Speaker 1: the ad Yeah, whoo whoo. Man, it skips me. But
Speaker 1: his vocal gymnastics on it the house not ho No, No,
Speaker 1: he's talking about his hit record. Uh that it was
Speaker 1: a hit. But I love I love you said the song.
Speaker 1: You had a song. But what I what I related
Speaker 1: to is how he executed it as a vocalist, Luther
Speaker 1: Andro's male vocalist to me, And I mean, I've been
Speaker 1: around a lot of years and I heard a lot
Speaker 1: of singers. Luthor for me, this is what I like.
Speaker 1: You said songs right, Well, I related to the guy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess. I guess that's what I'm doing. Yeah, go ahead,
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna start out with what I say. Songs
Speaker 1: R and B probably one of the biggest, but it
Speaker 1: was just one of my favorite. That would be me
Speaker 1: and Mrs Jones that that that to me was when
Speaker 1: he did that, it brought in a whole new and
Speaker 1: then another song one of my favorite songs and it's
Speaker 1: R and D. Then go you said, boy, why are
Speaker 1: you coming with all these white acts? What you won't do?
Speaker 1: Do love? To me? That was one of the greatest
Speaker 1: written R and B songs, And when I found he
Speaker 1: was white, I was stunned. I'm just being I said,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, how in the world one of the
Speaker 1: greatest songs was ever recorded for our concern? So those two,
Speaker 1: me and Mrs Jones, And then of course I can
Speaker 1: leave about Jesse Belvan. That's before you guys. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: put us up on that, put us up on. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He he had a song called good Night Love and
Speaker 1: night my love. I'm gonna listen, go listen to start
Speaker 1: saying to my wife from now on and not my love. Yeah,
Speaker 1: don't worry with it, don't worry you're around. Good Night
Speaker 1: my love. Well for me, you probably never heard this song,
Speaker 1: but I always like her because it was a song
Speaker 1: that was written by this young lady. She's not here
Speaker 1: anymore on this planet, but she took she when she
Speaker 1: wrote the song, because that's how I met my wife.
Speaker 1: I met my wife through Tina Marie, because my wife
Speaker 1: should sing with Tae Marie. So she happened to be
Speaker 1: on the cruise. But she wrote a song for us
Speaker 1: called Butter Butter, and she says, this is what a
Speaker 1: woman wants to hear from you. Guys. And when she
Speaker 1: sat there on her keyboard in her house and played
Speaker 1: that song, I was like, oh my god, Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: what a woman wants to hear. So but it was
Speaker 1: done by us. So it's one of my favorite songs. Uh.
Speaker 1: You mentioned a song. I think it's called here my Dear. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you were my wife to me. You know when he
Speaker 1: with some of the things he said in that man
Speaker 1: just wanted captivating everything inside of you. That was That's
Speaker 1: one of my favorite songs only because of his delivery
Speaker 1: and I could hear the pain in his voice. That
Speaker 1: was one of it. And uh, any del Phonic song
Speaker 1: because it didn't make any difference anymore between Tom Bell
Speaker 1: and Linda Creed, who wrote some of the greatest songs
Speaker 1: in the stylistics he wrote for them. He wrote for
Speaker 1: del Phonics too, you know last week and uh, any
Speaker 1: of you know la la Lala means I love you,
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff in the tone and him having
Speaker 1: that little baby thing kind of thing that he did do.
Speaker 1: I remember him gonna tell you the Sqol story. I
Speaker 1: remember when I wanted to be a vocalist and I
Speaker 1: wanted to be in a group. My father wanted me
Speaker 1: to be a saxophone player. But it was nothing sexy
Speaker 1: to me and that saxophone thing at all. So I
Speaker 1: went to see the Delfonics. I went to see the Delfonics,
Speaker 1: and I saw this nigger come out with William Hard
Speaker 1: and sing women into a trance where literally back in
Speaker 1: the day, you know, he wouldn't be doing that stuff
Speaker 1: now today, but he was. He must have slopped women
Speaker 1: in front of the stage. And I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's the nigger I wanted I want to be. So
Speaker 1: I went home and start working on my tenor as
Speaker 1: hard as I could, because that, I mean, I just
Speaker 1: didn't find anything with playing a saxophone. But I knew
Speaker 1: that I wanted to be out there and I wanted
Speaker 1: to sing. And all the women that you could get
Speaker 1: was like my mode. I didn't think like what the
Speaker 1: Scott didn't want to say. I didn't think about no
Speaker 1: damn money. I just want the different type of currency,
Speaker 1: different different and so you know, but any of the
Speaker 1: Delfonic stylistic songs, you know, all of those things, that's
Speaker 1: all I listened to when I first met them. So
Speaker 1: when they heard me sing for the first time, you know,
Speaker 1: because me and Scotty became friends. I went to see
Speaker 1: them performance, and once again this girl turned me onto him.
Speaker 1: But I went to see them at a performance, and
Speaker 1: I wanted to meet the whispers. So I decided, Okay,
Speaker 1: how can I meet the whispers? Okay, if I go
Speaker 1: with somebody, fine them, Nigga's gonna let me. Sure enough,
Speaker 1: he invited me back, probably dying scoop on what I had.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying, But it got me through
Speaker 1: the door. And then me and Scotty became friends. And
Speaker 1: I started picking up all picking him up all the time. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know when he was coming in l a from
Speaker 1: from the Bay Area and uh, one day I was
Speaker 1: taking him back to the airport and uh, delfonic song
Speaker 1: came on and I started singing, not even thinking because
Speaker 1: I used to sing in my car all the time
Speaker 1: with nobody in there, and now I looked around, ding,
Speaker 1: I'm singing in front of this nigger. He's a professional singer.
Speaker 1: He said, Man, Man, I didn't know you had that
Speaker 1: pretty falsettle with. Why don't you tell me you're saying?
Speaker 1: I said, man that you know, our friendship is not
Speaker 1: based on that. But I would be at every performance
Speaker 1: hoping one of them niggas getting to take take their place.
Speaker 1: And it happened, you know, it happened, and I was
Speaker 1: able to slide into there, and and it took me
Speaker 1: a year before I walked on stage. I sang back
Speaker 1: behind the background in the wings, but my mic set
Speaker 1: up there and sing and I could always sing. But
Speaker 1: Nicholas Carwell was my business obstacle to get through because
Speaker 1: he was a choreographer. He said, this nigga got two
Speaker 1: left feet. He ain't gonna make it. And Scotty begged him.
Speaker 1: He says, no, man, he don't use drugs. He's wearing
Speaker 1: Penny loafer shoes v Next sweaters. He's clean. He's clean,
Speaker 1: he don't use no drugs. He's the guy. So Nick,
Speaker 1: you know, you know, said well, we're gonna do a
Speaker 1: national audition and if we don't find another and them
Speaker 1: knew that audition, then I'll work with him. And they
Speaker 1: didn't find. Anybody in history is made. I've been with
Speaker 1: him now forty eight years, you know, fifty plus years.
Speaker 1: So he sunk back, stays for two years, Yeah, because
Speaker 1: he couldn't entertain and then I went through the same thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he didn't know what you If you wasn't right, If
Speaker 1: you wasn't right, you're not getting on that stage again.
Speaker 1: But I was behind the band or something to Literally,
Speaker 1: I didn't get behind the band. I was in the wing.
Speaker 1: Nobody even knew I was standing on the wing for
Speaker 1: people that stage, you know, stage crew. They knew I
Speaker 1: was standing there singing. But you know, but Nick, and
Speaker 1: every night after we performed either today, I would rehearse
Speaker 1: all day with Nick. Then at night we rehearse again.
Speaker 1: And I did that for almost two years. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: And two years later yeah yeah, And in Oakland, California,
Speaker 1: I got there thinking I'm gonna be in the wings again,
Speaker 1: and you said, okay, because I'm telling them all the
Speaker 1: time I'm ready, but I'm not sure if I'm ready.
Speaker 1: But I'm telling them ready, I'm ready, and said now
Speaker 1: that you're not quite ready yet, you know. And this
Speaker 1: one night they said, okay, you think you ready? I said, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm ready. Okay, it's not you're gonna get dressed, We're
Speaker 1: gonna go and stage. Remember that I never shake that
Speaker 1: much in my but you know, muscle memory from doing
Speaker 1: it all the time, it kicked in and it just
Speaker 1: got better and better because what people don't understand negative time,
Speaker 1: when you're just standing there doing nothing, how do you
Speaker 1: hold yourself. You can either look awkward or you can
Speaker 1: look g right, So people don't understand that in the performance, saying,
Speaker 1: Nick would always say, you have to hold your hands
Speaker 1: a certain way. You have to look like you can't
Speaker 1: look like you're thinking. You know, if you mess up,
Speaker 1: don't even worry about it, just catch it at the
Speaker 1: next spot, says they most likely won't know, you know,
Speaker 1: But that's what Nick taught me, and when them too,
Speaker 1: because when they walked out and niggas was like from
Speaker 1: the time they said ladies and gentlemen, the whispers from
Speaker 1: that point walking out, it was all choreographed to the everything, everything, everything,
Speaker 1: every bow, every I mean, every little minu thing that
Speaker 1: you probably wouldn't see was choreographic. And I had to
Speaker 1: learn all that took me two years. Wow, you know
Speaker 1: I love that. I love that. Okay, here we go.
Speaker 1: We're gonna do this in pieces. This is called the
Speaker 1: R and B Votron. We're gonna build your R and
Speaker 1: B singer. Okay, this is the whispers R and B Voltron.
Speaker 1: We're looking for who you want the vocal from, who
Speaker 1: you want the styling from, who you want the performance
Speaker 1: style from, and who you want the passion from. So,
Speaker 1: m wow, where you getting the vocal from? Something? With you?
Speaker 1: I'm looking right at you, Mr Feeling, Mr. I gotta
Speaker 1: sing it my way. You're talking about being see the
Speaker 1: problem and this is this is a fascinating question scepted
Speaker 1: because in my mind, who I wanted do for feeling
Speaker 1: ain't necessarily the person, because there's a difference between seeing
Speaker 1: with feeling and performing on the stage. Telling me who
Speaker 1: you want, well, you know who I want for feeling.
Speaker 1: There's only one Dannie hath Towait for feeling. But Danny,
Speaker 1: excuse my friends, I loved him to death. But Dannie
Speaker 1: was short guy with a big capple and his whole
Speaker 1: thing was that's that's comes from the voice, as you
Speaker 1: might be shocked to I say, in terms of performing, well, no,
Speaker 1: this is just the vocal. This is vocals. Donnie, have
Speaker 1: the way for me done? I love that. You can't
Speaker 1: you can't go wrong with that down there you were
Speaker 1: performing somebody else? Are you gonna spread this around? Okay?
Speaker 1: Who you getting the style from? Then? In terms of
Speaker 1: how they look on stage, the drip, that drip Marvin Gaye.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, dressed like Marv. This is getting different. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm coming with Yeah. Well, I don't know what you're
Speaker 1: gonna ask me, but he said, who are you getting
Speaker 1: the performer style from? How did he get down on stage? Wow,
Speaker 1: that's easy for me. I can't believe you ain't eveything
Speaker 1: performing and it's probably people. Well it's not before they
Speaker 1: know who he is. But James Brown, well, James performing
Speaker 1: before me, before he could throw it off. And it's amazing. Yeah, performing,
Speaker 1: he said, performing right, James Brown and Bobby Brown and
Speaker 1: Chris browning before me. But those two Brown you can't miss.
Speaker 1: With James Brown and Bobby Brown performing, my god, Yeah, tough.
Speaker 1: Young I watched him, watch him giving you a ship,
Speaker 1: the whole room, the whole group, everything they needed. I'm
Speaker 1: glad you said this kind and you know he's so young.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking and but you gotta give it to performing
Speaker 1: that category. That's a different hole, you know. Alright, one
Speaker 1: more piece, one more piece and all and all of
Speaker 1: you guys can chime in on this. Who you get
Speaker 1: the passion from the heart of your artists who give
Speaker 1: it all that guy. Well, yeah, well, I'm gonna tell
Speaker 1: you something that we work with him all the time,
Speaker 1: and I watched him perform, and he gives one hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty thousand percent every time he sings a song.
Speaker 1: And that to me is um um oh Jay's um.
Speaker 1: He gives one of the whole three pieces exactly. That
Speaker 1: is very very true. Good pig he did all the time.
Speaker 1: Anybody want to add to that, anybody with those for passion,
Speaker 1: for passion, I think Eddie LeVert is it? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: go with Eddie. Yeah, yeah, he gives you, He gives
Speaker 1: you all. I went on tour with with with him.
Speaker 1: I was on tour. I was opening for Jason Kid,
Speaker 1: I was opening for Baby Face, O Jays and Pata Bellow.
Speaker 1: Is that right? That's a favorite of Al Hayman Man. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know you're young, but I need somebody to feel
Speaker 1: fifteen minutes, no kidden, Yeah, I said, brother Al Hayman,
Speaker 1: whatever you need, I'm in this is this will be
Speaker 1: schools to be paid education. You should have been paying
Speaker 1: him paid education. And I watched I watched Eddie every night,
Speaker 1: and Eddie, we'll come and watch my show, no kidding, come,
Speaker 1: And then Baby face with you know, say, hey, man,
Speaker 1: you should come out and sing some of the you know,
Speaker 1: the song I wrote, all the songs that I wrote. Second,
Speaker 1: you should come sing some of those with me. Not
Speaker 1: come out man. The information I got from that tour. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then Patty come out there just oh my god. Up.
Speaker 1: Well you know what we do it. I got to
Speaker 1: give it to him to Luther. We tour it with
Speaker 1: him for a couple of years. Vocally, Lucy was strong,
Speaker 1: didn't was incredible, you know, And I'd asked him, I said,
Speaker 1: because don't you get horse? You know? He told me
Speaker 1: that you know, he didn't. He said he you know,
Speaker 1: he would take lemons and but not much. He said,
Speaker 1: what really does it for me? It's not singing? It
Speaker 1: just rests. I said, So that's that's because he'd go
Speaker 1: out on stage and his voice was so silky, you
Speaker 1: know what I'm talking about. He was, and he hit
Speaker 1: the notes every night every night. But you said it rest.
Speaker 1: He that's what he's said. We don't rest. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: don't rest. And I'm I'm victim of that because I'm
Speaker 1: like the class clown. I got to crack the jokes,
Speaker 1: you know, I got to have a feverage too. You
Speaker 1: know I'm running the midnight Oh it's then I'm gonna
Speaker 1: work out like and that's counter completely counterproductive. It is
Speaker 1: to keeping that instrument show. Yes what Luther told me.
Speaker 1: And I mean, you know, I never used lemons and
Speaker 1: stuff like that either, but I noticed after two or
Speaker 1: three days, I'm gonna be holes. You got to get
Speaker 1: some rest and not use them vocal cords. And he
Speaker 1: told me that's that's what it is, because I can't wondering.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, we boy the fourth night, you
Speaker 1: hear everybody you could tell Yeah, you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: everybody sound Yeah, yeah, I don't know what he did,
Speaker 1: but he didn't have that problem. Okay, well we got
Speaker 1: we got one more second for your man. We can
Speaker 1: and let y'all get away without getting to the brought
Speaker 1: of the most supports segment, especially when we got the legends,
Speaker 1: especially y'all got y'all got the best, you got the
Speaker 1: best story. There were no camera phones back, no cameras
Speaker 1: at all. Y'all got away with so much. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: we got a segment of the show. It's called I
Speaker 1: ain't saying on that name, so the story can be funnier,
Speaker 1: fucked up, funny, and fucked up. The only rule is
Speaker 1: you can't say nobody's names outside of the members of
Speaker 1: the of the of the Whispers. Okay, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. So right now we're about to get the
Speaker 1: whispers the whispers. I ain't saying no that well, I guess,
Speaker 1: uh baby close, yes and no names. But I think
Speaker 1: probably the craziest things that have happened to me back
Speaker 1: in the day, many years, many moons ago, Um, you know,
Speaker 1: doing my thing, met a young lady out on the
Speaker 1: road and uh, he took it back to the hotel.
Speaker 1: And this was the place sometimes we go to places
Speaker 1: where we're there for more than one day, so you
Speaker 1: have one that day and then you get another one
Speaker 1: the next thing. So so I wind up having this
Speaker 1: one girl, and then you know, next night, I meant
Speaker 1: another one that I really liked, so I decided open
Speaker 1: to take her back to the hotel. Well, the first
Speaker 1: one came back to the hotel uninvited, So she's sitting
Speaker 1: in the lobby waiting on me to roll in. So
Speaker 1: I rolled in with the other one on my arm.
Speaker 1: She said in there, She's like, uh, what's going on?
Speaker 1: I said, well, you know, uh, I'm with her, you know.
Speaker 1: She says, oh, no, no, no, no, no, you're not
Speaker 1: with her tonight, you're with me. And I said no,
Speaker 1: I'm with her. So you're gonna have to go home.
Speaker 1: Says no, no, no, anything like that. You with me.
Speaker 1: So get on the elevator. She gets on the elevator, Rember,
Speaker 1: I go up to my floor. I get off the elevator.
Speaker 1: She gets off the elevator too. I got one on
Speaker 1: the left, one on the right, so I take the
Speaker 1: other one. I said, okay, you're going in the room.
Speaker 1: I'll be here there. I gotta handle this. So the
Speaker 1: other girl said no, I'm we're all going in this
Speaker 1: room together. And I'm like, no, you can't come into them.
Speaker 1: And she said no, we were all gonna be in
Speaker 1: this room. We're all gonna party tonight together. I'm like, no, baby,
Speaker 1: you can't be in here. You know I'm with her.
Speaker 1: You go home, Gonna call you tomorrow. It's just no,
Speaker 1: it ain't going that way. So I tried to go
Speaker 1: in my room. She was pushing to go in the
Speaker 1: room with me. So I'm like, okay, wait minute, you
Speaker 1: know you need to stop all this. I'm trying to
Speaker 1: be cool. So I try to go in the room again.
Speaker 1: By this time people here. It's out in the hallway
Speaker 1: and Leon Blue, who was our musical he was actually
Speaker 1: our stage manager at this time. His buddy of mine
Speaker 1: were still close his leaves. We just went to his wife's,
Speaker 1: his new his a wedding. But anyway, he peeps out
Speaker 1: the door and he sees me out there, and he's
Speaker 1: eyeballing the argument. So after about the third time he
Speaker 1: trying to get in my room, I'm piste off. I'm
Speaker 1: mad now because she's interrupting my flow. So I put
Speaker 1: my hand on her chest and push her back. So
Speaker 1: she stumbles back and she breaks her heel on her shoe.
Speaker 1: So I decided, don't care. I'm going my room. I
Speaker 1: told you i'll see you tomorrow. Take up, you know.
Speaker 1: And she says, huh no, they ain't going down like that.
Speaker 1: And I heard clicker, and I turned around and she
Speaker 1: falls out a little thirty eight. I'll remember the day
Speaker 1: I died. It was all polished girl. Hand Well then
Speaker 1: Leon Blue and I don't think you're gonna come down
Speaker 1: and help me? His dog go clicker. Now I'm standing hallway,
Speaker 1: I'm like oh, so now I gotta go different. Baby,
Speaker 1: You don't you don't want to show I don't want
Speaker 1: you don't want to do that. But I didn't know.
Speaker 1: Ye she did. But we're standing in the hallway fifteen
Speaker 1: minutes arguing. I guess he went back to his room
Speaker 1: and called for college. The elevator opened. I've never been
Speaker 1: so relieved in my life. Too, big ass white policemen
Speaker 1: came and walked down the hall and so me pitching
Speaker 1: out and said she got guns. Part about it. He
Speaker 1: didn't hesitate or say anything about the gun. He says, Maam,
Speaker 1: you gotta go. I think he's gonna go, and you know,
Speaker 1: take her down, says you gotta go, and she's I'm
Speaker 1: not going. Anybody says, ma'am, You're either gonna go or
Speaker 1: we're gonna take you to jail. So he doesn't want
Speaker 1: to be He doesn't want to be with you, doesn't
Speaker 1: want to be bothered with you. You gotta leave. She
Speaker 1: walked over to me before she left, and she said,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get your ass to start up. From that point.
Speaker 1: On the other two days that we were there, I
Speaker 1: had a bodyguard every day because I didn't know she's
Speaker 1: gonna come back and shoot me or not. And so
Speaker 1: from that point on, I learned keep him for apart,
Speaker 1: don't be doing it in the same city. Stick with one.
Speaker 1: How you whispered to man? That was my crazy still,
Speaker 1: the whole whisper to half a whisperation, the whole whisper
Speaker 1: to everybody that I was like, Man, that scared me
Speaker 1: the daylights out of me because I was like, they
Speaker 1: didn't say nothing about the gun. I just gotta you
Speaker 1: gotta go, yeah, you know, And now that, yeah, we
Speaker 1: got a little here. Wow, Who's who's next? Who got
Speaker 1: something else to kind of intertwined because we ended up story.
Speaker 1: We were in Buffalo, New York. It's been years ago
Speaker 1: with the huge jazz artists. He's now gone. He had
Speaker 1: a record called was a Dukie stick BIG's talking about.
Speaker 1: We were opening for him, and in those days, the headliner,
Speaker 1: you know how it is, they get everything. So we
Speaker 1: get to the sound check and all of their instruments
Speaker 1: are covering the entire stage and all is left is
Speaker 1: about a spot as big as this table for us
Speaker 1: to perform. And we said, are the intromant is gonna
Speaker 1: be moved back? Or can you know? Because we couldn't
Speaker 1: even get the five of us on that. He said, no,
Speaker 1: that's it, that's your space. So Scottie said, no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: we gotta have more space in this. He gets piste
Speaker 1: off and he attempts to kick the drum set with
Speaker 1: his feet and one of the roadies came to stop
Speaker 1: him from kicking it, and Scottie turned around and Cole
Speaker 1: cocked that man and it was on. It was fighting.
Speaker 1: They called the police and our trumpet players said Scotty
Speaker 1: and walked, y'all got to get out of here, and
Speaker 1: then you go back to the hotel as if this
Speaker 1: never happened. And he said, when you get back to
Speaker 1: the hotel, get under the bid because they coming for you.
Speaker 1: Eat and they're gonna find you because but this is
Speaker 1: the only and we both got under the bed, and
Speaker 1: of course the bed kind of went like but we
Speaker 1: got under. We got under that. The funniest part about
Speaker 1: it is that when we went to the room to
Speaker 1: find out where they were. The guy you're talking about, John,
Speaker 1: he was our saxophone player, trumper trumper player, and I'm like, what, Scott,
Speaker 1: he's cracking up. Points you look out of the bed.
Speaker 1: They laying out like this. They actually come and took
Speaker 1: us to jail, but said, yeah, the police came to jail.
Speaker 1: We went to jail, both of Nick Nick paid off
Speaker 1: with basically how we end up getting out of jail.
Speaker 1: They end up taking us to jail with a little
Speaker 1: little funny. He got pressed charges. Yeah, he pressed charge
Speaker 1: and the police came, but Nick did is went to
Speaker 1: their road manager, paid them off and they dropped it.
Speaker 1: We spent overnight and they came and got us show
Speaker 1: that night. Mr show was over and the artists when
Speaker 1: you wish I could tell you, but he's artists. He
Speaker 1: died a few years ago. Piano player. Well, that's the
Speaker 1: only way that could they could hurt us because they
Speaker 1: knew our show, with our routines and the twins and stuff.
Speaker 1: If you could not give us enough space then you know,
Speaker 1: and there's other artists that done that too, you know
Speaker 1: that would give us a little space because they said,
Speaker 1: we don't need I don't need the heat, and long
Speaker 1: as I don't happen. I don't know this, this segments
Speaker 1: don't know and we're not calling no name, but I
Speaker 1: will say this much to who if you gets to
Speaker 1: who that was, because he's no longer with us. We
Speaker 1: end up being the greatest friends in life. And it
Speaker 1: wasn't him that it wasn't so much as if it
Speaker 1: was really his people. It has people because he would
Speaker 1: have never he would have never even went that route.
Speaker 1: And he was the greatest guy. I don't want to
Speaker 1: call his name because the seconds, well, let's put it
Speaker 1: like this. We later ended up and ended up doing
Speaker 1: one of our biggest Christmas songs that he produced. Wow, yeah,
Speaker 1: it worked out. Somebody had to catch those hands. Yeah,
Speaker 1: some good time. That's what you're crazy. That's what's crazy. Crazy.
Speaker 1: A lot of people caught hands. But let me say
Speaker 1: this to you YouTube and particularly said it in the beginning,
Speaker 1: but we have to say it again because the fact
Speaker 1: that you two young guys I thought enough of us
Speaker 1: to even allow us to do this. Yeah, a man,
Speaker 1: we don't take that for not. We appreciate it. We
Speaker 1: want you to know we appreciate we didn't even get
Speaker 1: into maybe we could do it another time. This platform
Speaker 1: gives us the opportunity to say to our people some
Speaker 1: things that we normally would have never got to do exactly.
Speaker 1: We thank you all for that. Yeah, we appreciate it.
Speaker 1: We don't take our granted. Man. Yeah, looks that you
Speaker 1: just appreciate old school. You know, heard that stuff on
Speaker 1: you know, and so trained talking about R and B
Speaker 1: is dead stuff, And I'm like, what the heck are
Speaker 1: they talking and just trying to spark us. Come at y'all.
Speaker 1: You didn't say hip hop. Yeah, y'all say R and beach.
Speaker 1: Everybody love you for money? Listen, we are we are
Speaker 1: we first of all, we love you. Um, we are
Speaker 1: not scared of the part two. So don't worry about that.
Speaker 1: I heard that anytime. You got it. Know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: to be doing of our cattle. Yeah, it's so good,
Speaker 1: be honest with you. We didn't even get to next time.
Speaker 1: We'll get catalog talk catalog. You don't talk to that catalog. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know anything about catalog to roll things. That's a
Speaker 1: bunch of them. The works, the works, you know what
Speaker 1: I'm said, the bodies works. Um. First of all, let
Speaker 1: me say we love you, We appreciate you, thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you, you are. You are held in high regard.
Speaker 1: Thank you over here. You know what I mean. And
Speaker 1: so um, we can't thank you enough. We can't thank
Speaker 1: you enough for the work um, and we can't thank
Speaker 1: you enough for just being here and get giving us
Speaker 1: these jewels and this information, and you know, because that's
Speaker 1: that's where we all suffer, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: We suffer from things we don't know, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. And so these these places, things, people, all
Speaker 1: of this that you have that you've we need it.
Speaker 1: Thank you. We need it. If we're gonna do better,
Speaker 1: it starts, it starts with the information. Thank you. Um
Speaker 1: so UM, I can't I can't wait to do this.
Speaker 1: I can't wait to talk catalog talking, and I can't
Speaker 1: wait for you to hold lesson in high regards by
Speaker 1: giving us one of them smashes. That's easy. That's easy
Speaker 1: because because I really get to tap into my phone,
Speaker 1: into my imaing. I really, I really get to be talented.
Speaker 1: I get to be talented. And you're doing something. You know,
Speaker 1: we're ballads. That's where you know, that's where we come from.
Speaker 1: So you come from that same school. So I know
Speaker 1: you've got something, you got something deep in us. Between
Speaker 1: the two of you, I can extend that bar, turnarounds
Speaker 1: to sixteen and you know they throw a special four
Speaker 1: and they're like, we can get creative that's that's easy,
Speaker 1: and it's a musk. It has to be done. I
Speaker 1: want to say to YouTube, just keep doing what you're
Speaker 1: doing doing, don't change. Just keep doing what you're doing
Speaker 1: and it'll be fine. Well I'm tanking. I'm Ja Valentine
Speaker 1: and this is the arm by Money podcast, the authority
Speaker 1: on all things are in and this y R Money,
Speaker 1: R and B Money is a production of the Black
Speaker 1: Effect Podcast Network. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
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Speaker 1: to and rate our show, and you can connect with
Speaker 1: us on social media at Ja Valentine and at the
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Speaker 1: forward Slash, R and B Money