Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is Taj Mahals. You're the n YU
Speaker 1: artist in residents. Tell me about that. Well, it's it's
Speaker 1: uh something that's pretty exciting, you know, to be uh
Speaker 1: singles out and asked to be uh, you know, bring
Speaker 1: what it is that I do to a group of
Speaker 1: young students that prestigious university. I'm a I'm a you know,
Speaker 1: stoked to be able to do it and be a
Speaker 1: part of it. So what exactly is it you will
Speaker 1: be doing? Um, explaining some of the music that I play,
Speaker 1: showing some of the styles, showing how what kinds of
Speaker 1: connections they are, you know, I mean, it's a tremendous
Speaker 1: amnomus have been brought into this hole. Um. You know
Speaker 1: the dia spoard that's here between um, the Western Hemisphere
Speaker 1: and uh the continent of Africa and the European intervention
Speaker 1: to see that we all got over here and all
Speaker 1: the music that's been created as a result of that movement,
Speaker 1: and you know, and now it's sort of somehow it's
Speaker 1: like the rails that the world works on in terms
Speaker 1: of music from from the West. Look, can you go
Speaker 1: a little deeper and tell us about that, go a
Speaker 1: little deeper. Uh um No, I mean there's there's there's
Speaker 1: not much more. As a as a kid growing up,
Speaker 1: you know, I hear music from the Caribbean or South
Speaker 1: because I have Caribbean relatives of my Fotherish people and
Speaker 1: my mother's people are from the American soil. So it's
Speaker 1: kind of an interesting thing. There's a kid to grow
Speaker 1: up with parents who two told you that gave you
Speaker 1: a good you know, foundation to be able to move
Speaker 1: forward in the world that you know, there was nothing
Speaker 1: that you couldn't do. Uh. There may be people in
Speaker 1: this world who may doubt you or or may me
Speaker 1: not right to your face, tell you that they don't
Speaker 1: think that you're of any value. Ignore all of its
Speaker 1: absolutely meaningless, you know, and do something that is worthwhile
Speaker 1: with your life. You know that has something to do
Speaker 1: with community, you know, you know, something for humanity. And
Speaker 1: so as a kid listening to music, you know, I
Speaker 1: would hear music like from South America, Central America, or
Speaker 1: the Caribbean or or you know, some other place like
Speaker 1: that that was close to my own culture or you know,
Speaker 1: d NA have not even talked about that during that time,
Speaker 1: and uh, I wonder why I already knew what I
Speaker 1: was listening to. Maybe not the language, but I certainly
Speaker 1: could feel the music and feel where it was coming from.
Speaker 1: And then you know, the same went for the basically
Speaker 1: placed to save value when it was on music that
Speaker 1: came from Europe and in Great Britain. If it moved me,
Speaker 1: then obviously it was something I needed to know about.
Speaker 1: And so you know, talking to a lot of these
Speaker 1: young kids who who maybe only experienced commercial music, you know,
Speaker 1: and kind of trying to help them expand past that
Speaker 1: one and a half you know, ticks on either side
Speaker 1: of what you've been listening to get him the thing
Speaker 1: outside the box. So you had a big birthday this year.
Speaker 1: How does it feel to be this age? Cool? My
Speaker 1: plumber still works, I'm still excited about waking up every day,
Speaker 1: and I'm still learning stuff about music and still composing
Speaker 1: and you know, enjoying life. So what wisdom? You know,
Speaker 1: we live in a youth oriented culture, but those of
Speaker 1: us who have gotten older, and you've now reached eighty,
Speaker 1: you gain a lot of insight into life. Can you
Speaker 1: give us anythings that you've learned going through eight decades already.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, be true, be very true to your you know,
Speaker 1: when you discover what it is that you want to do,
Speaker 1: you know, just be true to it. You know, stay
Speaker 1: on your course. Stay your course, man, you know, set
Speaker 1: your course. But whatever it is that you think that
Speaker 1: you want to do, you know. And and like Yoda,
Speaker 1: do or not do but don't try? Yeah, and what
Speaker 1: can you tell us about love relationships? Well, I'm this
Speaker 1: is the question of it. So now why are you
Speaker 1: asking me these things? What's this going to amount for you?
Speaker 1: I mean, okay, the traditional interviews are you did this,
Speaker 1: you did that, what about your new album, etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker 1: That's basically worthless because mostly people can listen to the
Speaker 1: music and they don't get to know who the person is.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to get to know who you are and
Speaker 1: the wisdom you have. I'm not trying to put you
Speaker 1: on this. No, No, that's okay, that's okay, that's okay,
Speaker 1: because you made an assumption coming in that I've never
Speaker 1: given that kind of information in an interview, and I
Speaker 1: have all along. That's what they cut out. You never
Speaker 1: hear about that. You're right, absolutely correct, So now I
Speaker 1: know what footing you're on it because it's like, wait
Speaker 1: a second, is this this is your life? You know,
Speaker 1: just uh okay, sixty four questions. No, I'm you know,
Speaker 1: it's like I don't you know, I haven't really like said.
Speaker 1: What to do is like find good people, you know,
Speaker 1: find find really good people to be around, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean number one you want if you're talking about
Speaker 1: love relationships, you know, you want to know about a
Speaker 1: woman that that that can can Dad's cook you know
Speaker 1: it's smart, you know, won't let you be stupid, you know,
Speaker 1: and vice versa. You know you know Dad's cook not
Speaker 1: be stupid, you know, and uh, you appreciate, appreciate your
Speaker 1: your your help when they turned around and say, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, I smell gas in to gets you what's
Speaker 1: going on? Cut my car won't start, you know, and
Speaker 1: really appreciate all those things. Vice versa. You know, when
Speaker 1: you get hot headed in the wrong place, that person
Speaker 1: knows how to put their hand on put their hand
Speaker 1: on your forearm, and immediately you calm down. You know,
Speaker 1: somebody really knows what's going on. It takes time to
Speaker 1: find those people because a lot of times, you know, man,
Speaker 1: they're visually oriented. Sometimes you miss it. You know, listen,
Speaker 1: listen to the inside. Let's talk about interacting in the business.
Speaker 1: I found. You know, the reputation is, oh, we have
Speaker 1: all these flagrant musicians, these stars. I know, the people
Speaker 1: who underneath the stars usually have to be nice in
Speaker 1: order to work. You're certainly a star. What is it
Speaker 1: when do you say no to people in the business
Speaker 1: or when do you check yourself and say, I better
Speaker 1: be nice because who knows what's going to happen next
Speaker 1: time around. I don't really worry about that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: I just do what I do. You know, I've always
Speaker 1: been a man of my word, and that's always put
Speaker 1: here on earth to kill my My folks really gave
Speaker 1: me those kinds of things to work with, you know,
Speaker 1: and you know it's it's it's done well for me.
Speaker 1: All the way through here. A lot of guys keep
Speaker 1: coming in and say they can't get this done, they
Speaker 1: can't get that done. Well, I don't know what you're
Speaker 1: looking for. I mean, the bottom line is is that
Speaker 1: you have an honest, honest approach to everything. And I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: there are people, there are people who have who have
Speaker 1: stepped on my toes, and there are people who people
Speaker 1: who ses I stepped on invertently without sometimes knowingly and
Speaker 1: sometimes not knowing. But hey, at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: you know, we're we're all men, and we need to
Speaker 1: know how to learn how to get along and do business.
Speaker 1: So when you got into the public eye and the sixties,
Speaker 1: it was a very different music business than it is today.
Speaker 1: If you had a major label deal, they promoted you. Now,
Speaker 1: even the biggest artists in the world reach a fraction
Speaker 1: of the public. So is it hard to still be
Speaker 1: motivated or you know you have your audience, or is
Speaker 1: it more about just doing good work. Um, it's hard
Speaker 1: when you're coming in in the sixties to really know
Speaker 1: you're affair. Yeah, you know, that said to me a
Speaker 1: lot of years to really understand what the fact because
Speaker 1: you know, like the people who were selling lots of
Speaker 1: records during those years. Um, you know, maybe I did
Speaker 1: and maybe I didn't. I don't know the numbers. Who do.
Speaker 1: You can never depend upon what these guys will tell
Speaker 1: you, you you know, and the business is not known for
Speaker 1: for being you know, giving you an honest count. But
Speaker 1: all those things being you know, set aside. Um, my
Speaker 1: focus has always been about the music. That's why I
Speaker 1: have the kind of output because if you knew how
Speaker 1: much music was out there and not knowing how much
Speaker 1: time you have to to put it out, most people
Speaker 1: would shut up and be busy and there'd be lots
Speaker 1: more music out there, regardless of the renumera isution. You know,
Speaker 1: nobody in Africa from where my from, where my DNA
Speaker 1: comes from, and where I'm focused being a grill. You know.
Speaker 1: One of the things you got to really understand here
Speaker 1: is that they scrubbed our hard drives clean five dred
Speaker 1: years ago, okay. And so if you're lucky enough and
Speaker 1: I'm and I'm and I put my energy under thinking
Speaker 1: that I could be able to find the connection between
Speaker 1: where I was living, you know, in this you know,
Speaker 1: five hundred years and what went on before now. And
Speaker 1: I made that connection and found the people, and the
Speaker 1: people found me. You know, most people are are don't
Speaker 1: have any idea. I mean, it doesn't make it us
Speaker 1: what group of individuals you come from that puts you
Speaker 1: in the Western world. Everybody's down beaten from five d
Speaker 1: years ago, okay. But some people who down beat from
Speaker 1: five hundred years ago or maybe two or three hundred
Speaker 1: years ago, you know, still know that they have a country,
Speaker 1: you know that they can go back to as customs speaks.
Speaker 1: The language, you know, has colors that represent them. You know.
Speaker 1: In my case, you know that's that's not so, you know,
Speaker 1: except I had progressive parents who were about, you know,
Speaker 1: making sure I knew that I had a connection beyond
Speaker 1: my having out hard drives scrubbed out five years ago.
Speaker 1: So all I've been doing is going looking for making
Speaker 1: those connections and showing people that they exist, you know,
Speaker 1: meaning that there are rio's you know, musicians who are historians,
Speaker 1: family and his storians who started in the eleventh century
Speaker 1: a d okay, and many of them have seventy to
Speaker 1: ninety you know, and even a hundred generations that they
Speaker 1: have been the same musician. There's no music business over
Speaker 1: the top deciding that if the money comes up to
Speaker 1: the top, you know, we'll keep it. If the money
Speaker 1: stops coming to the shop, we'll pull up the nets
Speaker 1: and then everybody will panic, so, oh my god, there's
Speaker 1: nothing here. We're gonna have to come up with something.
Speaker 1: As soon as we come up with something, the net
Speaker 1: drops down again and the moneyment tricky lays up. I'm
Speaker 1: not a part of any of that. What I suggest
Speaker 1: for young people to do is that if you love
Speaker 1: the music, if you love whatever it is that you do,
Speaker 1: you know, if whatever it is that you do you love,
Speaker 1: you'll never work a day in your life, or any
Speaker 1: work that you do will not be something that you'll
Speaker 1: be disappointed in. I mean, how disappointing is it just
Speaker 1: spend forty fifties, sixties, seventy eighty years of your life
Speaker 1: working with some of something or somebody who doesn't really
Speaker 1: care if you, if you exist or not. So I
Speaker 1: don't hon't I get pasted all of that, and and
Speaker 1: and now I don't. You know, It's like, whatever it is,
Speaker 1: we'll figure it out. At one time, it was ox carts,
Speaker 1: it was walking, you know, it was os cards and donkeys,
Speaker 1: you know whatever. The next thing, you know, people are
Speaker 1: flying across over oceans and they don't use them anymore,
Speaker 1: but seven sevens whatever they are air busses doing much happening.
Speaker 1: So somewhere along the line, something's gonna change. Things are
Speaker 1: gonna be different. What really counts knowing how to really
Speaker 1: play real music that counts in every every place. Yeah, okay, Uh,
Speaker 1: your parents were very progressive to what degree do you
Speaker 1: know your own personal history X number of generations back? Um,
Speaker 1: I can go back probably like about close to get
Speaker 1: closer to the seventeenth century. Wow in one side of
Speaker 1: my family. Um um, well I would say, yeah, baby,
Speaker 1: maybe more Claire eighteen eighteenth century. And we're we're we're
Speaker 1: when we're moving, were progressively moving back via African dna.
Speaker 1: Um Um, Actually ancestry DNA got me, got me where
Speaker 1: it was where it wasn't West Africa, you know, but
Speaker 1: African ancestry puts me squarely in Gabon and so you
Speaker 1: know that's where a lot of the energy. And my
Speaker 1: mother's side asked some interesting um, interesting Eastern African uh
Speaker 1: lineage that came across on the um the land bridge
Speaker 1: that was between Russia and uh, you know Alaska. So yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a lot of stuff, a lot going on, and
Speaker 1: you know, via music what what I can hear and
Speaker 1: what I can feel. You know, we've been able to
Speaker 1: make a lot of connections. And have you been to Africa, regulars, sir?
Speaker 1: Many people have not? Tell it. Tell us what you
Speaker 1: learned there? Well, it wasn't what I learned. It is
Speaker 1: what I mean basically that uh, I went to seventy nine.
Speaker 1: We went we did I think twelve countries in three months,
Speaker 1: and then the last time I went back, I went
Speaker 1: to Zanzibar recorded, Yeah, I mean it it's soulful, but
Speaker 1: but deeper, and you know it's it's it's it's not
Speaker 1: living in the first world, which the U s is
Speaker 1: is a different reality and living in living on the continent.
Speaker 1: You know, a lot of things are all the same,
Speaker 1: you know, cities and running water and indoor toilets and
Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff that a lot of people
Speaker 1: think it's like kids with distinted bellies and flies in
Speaker 1: their eyes, and it's uh Sally Strula is saying, oh
Speaker 1: my god, twenty back cents a day brings these parts.
Speaker 1: You know, it's just media, you know that could be
Speaker 1: just there are people in this country. Look at all
Speaker 1: these tents, all these homeless here. It looks like a
Speaker 1: third world country. If you asked me developing country and
Speaker 1: they figure that out, you know, I dare I say,
Speaker 1: lots of money goes out of this country to certain
Speaker 1: situations that things are in. We have people that are
Speaker 1: getting poisoned by the water and flint Michigan and having
Speaker 1: difficulty in Jackson, Mississippi. That should be you know, take
Speaker 1: care of home first and the rest be okay. But
Speaker 1: going going to America was like wonderful, you know, I
Speaker 1: was the last few years i've been been, um, you know,
Speaker 1: getting preparing myself to go back, you know, go and
Speaker 1: visit again, you know, and we'll see. I have friends,
Speaker 1: you know, friends in different countries there, and uh they're
Speaker 1: always people real happy to receive me. I'll be happy
Speaker 1: to be there. So, you know, sixties were time of upheaval,
Speaker 1: a lot of civil rights issue as a black man
Speaker 1: in America. What's it like today compared to when you
Speaker 1: were coming up? Oh? Clearly when I was coming up,
Speaker 1: uh crt. You know, it's a it's it's uh as
Speaker 1: as dangerous, but but different in in uh more cyberspace,
Speaker 1: you know, digital world kind of way. Now, when you
Speaker 1: were coming up, you were very much involved with anglos
Speaker 1: and white music. And why did you say that? I'm
Speaker 1: talking about not in terms of your own personality, the
Speaker 1: way you were marketed, okay and working with a lot
Speaker 1: of white uh commercial artists. What was it like being
Speaker 1: were you the only black guy around or did you
Speaker 1: find no, there was a lot of them it's just
Speaker 1: that some people, some people didn't understand that you have
Speaker 1: to do you have to have a certain kind of
Speaker 1: drive and and you can't spend there's a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of stuff that you can't spend time, um being emotional about,
Speaker 1: you know, because a lot of people because they haven't.
Speaker 1: You know, I grew up in New England. Okay, Um,
Speaker 1: my dad grew up in New York. His his parents
Speaker 1: were immigrants. You know, we grew up in good communities.
Speaker 1: You know, different people were different people still part of
Speaker 1: the human race. So a lot of guys I didn't
Speaker 1: you know, I just didn't. I didn't have that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. I was the only black guy there, so
Speaker 1: I didn't know that none of that stuff about me.
Speaker 1: You know. The point of it was is that is
Speaker 1: that I discovered early on that that the older music,
Speaker 1: the older Black music, which is like titter scenario, the
Speaker 1: music happening and people it gets it gets distorted when, uh,
Speaker 1: when someone from another culture decides that you're just this
Speaker 1: from your culture is what is economically viable. There are
Speaker 1: lots of other things that were viable. The part of
Speaker 1: what I was doing, no matter what in the music
Speaker 1: that I put out There is always music that maybe
Speaker 1: somebody doesn't really understand what it is, but there are
Speaker 1: people who do because it's it's cultural, it is. And
Speaker 1: you know, I don't do music. I don't do do
Speaker 1: music for money. I don't play. I don't perform music
Speaker 1: for money. You know what the money comes, the money
Speaker 1: comes in to make it, you know, make make my
Speaker 1: you know, my uh my traveling from one place to
Speaker 1: the next, and be able to handle my responsibilities done,
Speaker 1: you know. But but playing nowadays, yeah, there was. It was.
Speaker 1: It was a largely white audience that seemed to really
Speaker 1: like the older music and be a part of that.
Speaker 1: At no time, he ever, wasn't that there was no
Speaker 1: room for anybody black in my you know, in my
Speaker 1: crew organization, in fact, oftentimes my personal organization you know,
Speaker 1: did have you know, at all African Americans. You your staff.
Speaker 1: My brother was was my manager. You know, we had
Speaker 1: two wasn't ful ladies that worked for me, you know,
Speaker 1: you know, but I was, like I said, I don't
Speaker 1: have I didn't have any I didn't have no problem
Speaker 1: with with people because I came up around lots of
Speaker 1: different ethnics, you know, and we all went to school together.
Speaker 1: Playing music. I grew up in the Western Massachusetts. Um
Speaker 1: you're born in New York, raised in Western Massachusetts. You know, Springfield,
Speaker 1: Massachusetts is like maybe like well, I don't know the
Speaker 1: terminal on the underground railroad. You know. Lots of people
Speaker 1: had different kinds of relationships with their lives. They own homes, businesses,
Speaker 1: you know, we're principles of schools round the police force,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean all a lot of things that
Speaker 1: are in other other you know, parts of the country
Speaker 1: where you know, you gotta a force, a police force
Speaker 1: that don't look like the people that they're they're dealing with.
Speaker 1: You know. Where where it was with us is that, hey,
Speaker 1: this is the neighborhood these people living, this is the
Speaker 1: neighborhood that should be the you know, the police force
Speaker 1: that's dealing with them, you know, and they should look
Speaker 1: like that. So a whole lot of things I was
Speaker 1: really surprised at. People didn't really have any ideas. You know,
Speaker 1: my mother was college graduate from South Carolina State nineteen seven,
Speaker 1: you know, in early childhood development. You know, my father's
Speaker 1: Caribbean jazz pianist, composer, you know, sharp, smart guy. He
Speaker 1: didn't he didn't go to college. But he was well read.
Speaker 1: And the two of them, we all have some high
Speaker 1: had the same kind of high ideals that a lot
Speaker 1: of people in Harlem head back in those days. You know.
Speaker 1: I mean it's only the the the ignorance of the
Speaker 1: bulk of population at large that has no idea that
Speaker 1: these things were going on. You know, how did your
Speaker 1: parents meet? Savoy ballroom? Uh during the time of Ella Fitzgerald.
Speaker 1: Ella Fitzgerald was like the hot new phenom. She was
Speaker 1: there at the Savoy Ballroom playing with u um uh
Speaker 1: to chick web bad. My dad was there to deliver
Speaker 1: some um some sheet music, you know, some charts for
Speaker 1: the band Hawker tunes that he was composing, you know,
Speaker 1: get paid, you know. And my mother came there with
Speaker 1: a bunch of her girlfriends to hear this incredible pheno
Speaker 1: the Savoy Ballroom, the two of him, he saw her,
Speaker 1: saw her. That table of women came on over, made
Speaker 1: the pitch and here I am ah. And you see,
Speaker 1: your mother graduated from South Carolina State in the thirties.
Speaker 1: That was an arrow where a lot of people, white
Speaker 1: or black didn't go to college. So what was her
Speaker 1: family upbringing? Like her mother came to her. My grandmother
Speaker 1: came to her marriage with two auntred acres and the phone.
Speaker 1: My grandfather, my mother's father, was a was a farmer
Speaker 1: in the beginning, and later later on was a tailor
Speaker 1: and ran a great cleaning a step you know, you know,
Speaker 1: close cleaning establishment. You know that tailored and did all
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. And you know, my mother was
Speaker 1: the first one of her family to go to college,
Speaker 1: so you know, and when she met your father in
Speaker 1: the ballroom, what was she doing for work? Do you remember? Yes,
Speaker 1: she was on her hands and knees and Long Island
Speaker 1: scrubbing floors. Because of the New York State Board of Education,
Speaker 1: I thought we didn't allow the type of education that
Speaker 1: she had to be able to be teaching in their
Speaker 1: school system. You know, horribly disappointed. She did only the
Speaker 1: only thing that women were, you know, black women at
Speaker 1: that time were thought they could do. And so she was.
Speaker 1: She get on her train every day about the Long
Speaker 1: Island scrimped those those floors with the lady who put
Speaker 1: on the white gloves going along to the base board
Speaker 1: to make sure that was no dirt. And uh, unfortunately,
Speaker 1: in the early fifties, with a husband and five kids,
Speaker 1: she went back to college and she got her masters
Speaker 1: to read from Springfield College. And the reason, the reason
Speaker 1: was always so that nobody could ever tell her again
Speaker 1: that she didn't have enough credits or enough education to
Speaker 1: be able to do the job she did. You know,
Speaker 1: like I was saying, is that the town that we
Speaker 1: grew up in. You know, we have black principles, black policemen,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, you name it. You know it
Speaker 1: was and this wasn't just this was a longside of
Speaker 1: everybody else's ethnic groupie represent you know, so you know,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a different kind of thing when you
Speaker 1: grow up like that. A lot of people they go
Speaker 1: off on this side of the town. They don't know
Speaker 1: who these people are. The only time they deal with
Speaker 1: him is this by way or that way, you know,
Speaker 1: so forth and so on. It wasn't that way. I
Speaker 1: mean there's a minute that they were you know places
Speaker 1: around that you know where people you know, um like
Speaker 1: East long Meadow or Agaam or you know long Meadow
Speaker 1: where you know they were very well risk. People say
Speaker 1: out toward um Hamden, you know, a little a little
Speaker 1: small sixteen ten three four or five six ten fifteen
Speaker 1: sixty acre, little farmers and kids had horses and ponies
Speaker 1: and whatnot. You know, everybody didn't go out there unless
Speaker 1: we had something to do, you know, in that space.
Speaker 1: But you know, yeah, she that's what she was doing,
Speaker 1: you know she was. And she heard a bunch of
Speaker 1: kitchen mechanics as they used to call themselves, not cooks
Speaker 1: and waiters or whatever, you know, at all ladies at
Speaker 1: call going out well, you know, because that was always
Speaker 1: like the talk the talk of the town at that moment.
Speaker 1: And then your father was from where in the career
Speaker 1: of being and what motivated him to move to New
Speaker 1: York St. Kitts and he was as my grandfather and grandmother. Hello,
Speaker 1: we've had passports in our family on that side of
Speaker 1: the of of you know, my father's side of the families.
Speaker 1: This nineteen o two when they came up from Saint
Speaker 1: Kitts and he was small islands down there. You know,
Speaker 1: the the British put a stragglehold on a lot of them,
Speaker 1: you know, so when Sugar went out, you know, you
Speaker 1: had to find we have find other kinds of jobs
Speaker 1: to do. My grandfather, you know, was educated in the
Speaker 1: British system. You know, it came came to New York.
Speaker 1: Probably my grandmother from from Saint Kitts and New York.
Speaker 1: She was on the same thing for her. She was
Speaker 1: as a fourteen year old girl. She you know, people
Speaker 1: used to leave New England or wherever in the United
Speaker 1: States and summertime go on vacation and take their wives
Speaker 1: down to the Caribbean and they wouldn't have to cook,
Speaker 1: wash clean or make beds and you know, give the
Speaker 1: wife um uh vacation while he was out of hustling,
Speaker 1: you know, after they spent the year hustling trying to
Speaker 1: put them up with his money together, you know. And
Speaker 1: I'm just talking about general people from the dominant culture.
Speaker 1: So my grandmother, Uh, after a couple of years of
Speaker 1: these folks coming down there, she and her sister were
Speaker 1: doing all this different work for these people. She was
Speaker 1: asked would she like to come to the States and
Speaker 1: u and if she came to the States, she could work, uh,
Speaker 1: work off her passage with these people. And uh so
Speaker 1: they agree to it. She came to the States work
Speaker 1: for these folks, and one day my grandfather, who was working, uh,
Speaker 1: you know the same thing. He they all thought about
Speaker 1: the United States. You know, we're wonderful to be able.
Speaker 1: They had their kids there. You know, there'll be American
Speaker 1: citizens and not only the grandkids, you know. So I'm
Speaker 1: the grandkid, you know, and so and and and rightly,
Speaker 1: so they saw how you could, you know, you use movie,
Speaker 1: your your vision from generation to generation. So yeah, they
Speaker 1: My grandmother was working for these people. She came up.
Speaker 1: She was working for him. And one day the house
Speaker 1: was hot, she's opening winness, she was dusting. She went
Speaker 1: out on the porch. She had been making some tea
Speaker 1: and she went out on the porch and sat there
Speaker 1: and and it's cooling off. And a guy came by
Speaker 1: and looked up at her and said, I know you.
Speaker 1: You're from since kids and needles, you know, more like
Speaker 1: I know yo you're from, saying she said, oh no,
Speaker 1: you don't know me. He said, yeah, yeah, I see you,
Speaker 1: ambassador aside from kidon, hear me. This, this is what
Speaker 1: you don't know about me. You know, you don't know
Speaker 1: my uh, the other voices that existed, you know, the
Speaker 1: other people that are there that are you know. But anyway,
Speaker 1: she they talked for a while, and so he said,
Speaker 1: so you're working for these people. She said yeah. He
Speaker 1: said well, you'll never working if you say you marry me,
Speaker 1: you'll never work with anybody else. House what's your own? Yeah,
Speaker 1: he came, he paid, he paid off the rest of
Speaker 1: her dittrid situation, you know, and she never worked for
Speaker 1: anybody else. And bore my bore you know, my my father,
Speaker 1: my father, and my uncle's Okay, there are five kids
Speaker 1: in the family. How many boys, how many girls? Where
Speaker 1: are you in that hierarchy? And where are they today?
Speaker 1: I'm nailis uh and that in that particular part of
Speaker 1: the family. Um they allays said were two boys and
Speaker 1: three girls. One one of the one of the boys,
Speaker 1: and one of the girls that are deceased. There are
Speaker 1: three of us left in that part of the family.
Speaker 1: When my my father, unfortunately was tragically killed in nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty four in a in an accident with some machinery
Speaker 1: in our backyard. And a number of years later my
Speaker 1: mother remarried to a Jamaican man who came with three kids.
Speaker 1: So there was eight of us and then they had
Speaker 1: one in his nine and of that, uh, see what
Speaker 1: we got. I think they're yeah four four us, yeah,
Speaker 1: four or passed and if five still living And I'm
Speaker 1: I'm the eldest. Your father, he made a musician fully
Speaker 1: as a musician or a musician was more of a hobby. No,
Speaker 1: he was a full He was full a musician and composer.
Speaker 1: I was able to corroborate that with Ella Fitzgerald, who
Speaker 1: I ran into at a concert she was having and
Speaker 1: I was in Hawaii and a friend of mine said
Speaker 1: told me that she was there and that she was
Speaker 1: she had somebody that was working, um the stage and said, hey,
Speaker 1: come on in if you could be quiet, you know,
Speaker 1: nominal disturbance, you hear the sound check. So I was definitely.
Speaker 1: My mother used to always talk about um, them talking
Speaker 1: about my father is as the genius genius right, so um,
Speaker 1: you know my mother could be dramatic, you know. So
Speaker 1: I mean I didn't say I didn't think. No, I
Speaker 1: just didn't know I needed to improve that. There was
Speaker 1: a year there, so finally got to go up and
Speaker 1: meet meet Ella and I told her, you know what
Speaker 1: my dad's name was, and she stopped and looked me
Speaker 1: up and down. Oh my god, you are geniuses son.
Speaker 1: And I was like, hey, mom, wherever you are, you're right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So how old were you when you moved from New
Speaker 1: York City to Springfield. Oh I don't remember that movie
Speaker 1: because I was in my mom's arms. It was about
Speaker 1: six six months. And what kind of kids were you
Speaker 1: growing up? Were you popular? Were you're a loner? We
Speaker 1: got to ask sports. Uh no, you know, the sports
Speaker 1: were really big. But a lot of times that sports
Speaker 1: with these guys was because they didn't have a dad,
Speaker 1: you know, so their coach became their sir, your dad.
Speaker 1: I had a phomb, you know, we played catch, baseball,
Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff. And they were really really
Speaker 1: really I mean not that I didn't like the space
Speaker 1: the sports guys, you know, um fact, just recently, well
Speaker 1: a few years ago, before the pandemic, I ran into
Speaker 1: Don Newcombe. You know, I remember having Don Newcomb training
Speaker 1: guards right Don Newcomb glove you know, yeah, yeah, Nuke
Speaker 1: got a particularly kind of glove to you know all,
Speaker 1: you know like that. But not really, I wasn't really
Speaker 1: really really in retrospect, I'm looking back, I'll tell you
Speaker 1: what I would have really loved to do. I would
Speaker 1: have loved to play rugby, I'm telling you, you know,
Speaker 1: but it was it wasn't. It's a you know a
Speaker 1: classic example of something that you didn't get close to
Speaker 1: see what it was, and it had I've been more
Speaker 1: involved in the Caribbean side of my family beyond you know,
Speaker 1: like socially, in sports and all that kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: because you know, we get to our baseball, which is
Speaker 1: you know, a voice a version of cricket. You know,
Speaker 1: you don't that you know in the in the in
Speaker 1: the Caribbean, guys play cricket. But it wasn't only to
Speaker 1: a grown man that I was traveling around and it
Speaker 1: got to go to England in Australia and New Zealand
Speaker 1: and other places where cricket is played and got a
Speaker 1: chance to sell U see a Test match and how
Speaker 1: this thing works, you know, and go like, okay, there's
Speaker 1: another way. But man, I loved I would have loved
Speaker 1: to play rugby. I just love that game. And my
Speaker 1: favorite team is the New Zealand All Black, particularly the
Speaker 1: team during the years when they had that guy showing
Speaker 1: a lambo. Man. I'll never forget it that I saw
Speaker 1: this guy going down the field. He was eighteen years
Speaker 1: old at the time. He had three defenders, one on
Speaker 1: one leg, one guy around the waist, and another guy
Speaker 1: trying to hold him around the neck. And he was
Speaker 1: just plowing down the field. I was like, Okay, that's
Speaker 1: a game. I'm like, I like that game a lot. Anyway, No,
Speaker 1: I was. I was a lot of fun. I was interested.
Speaker 1: And the big thing happened for me was when my
Speaker 1: my mother, who yes, I say her mom came to
Speaker 1: her marriage with a farm and two hundred acres and
Speaker 1: that was an interesting thing to find out how that
Speaker 1: all worked in the South at that time. But my
Speaker 1: mother knew all that stuff. She grew up knowing you know,
Speaker 1: little Howard growth things and you know, you know, grow
Speaker 1: up you you know, raise animals and all that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. And then you know, through goring to college
Speaker 1: and sophistications, he did all those things too. But that
Speaker 1: was on top of a real basic, solid, real woman
Speaker 1: you know, who was he was totally accountable for everything
Speaker 1: she was up to. And uh, you know, so you know,
Speaker 1: all all that, all that served, all that served to
Speaker 1: me make my life a really much You're a much
Speaker 1: better place, you know. I mean I could go on
Speaker 1: and on and on and on. We'll be all day
Speaker 1: talking about it. So were you a good student? No,
Speaker 1: not so good. Pretty good in the beginning, I say,
Speaker 1: But after my dad passed. Uh, it was kind of
Speaker 1: traumatized by you know what I mean, And I couldn't
Speaker 1: think of I think it was music that got me
Speaker 1: through it. And uh, you know, I mean it's sort
Speaker 1: of like I go, like from the sixth grade to
Speaker 1: the ninth grade. There's the only thing I could hear
Speaker 1: in there. What if I look back over that time
Speaker 1: is the music. And one thing that a teacher said
Speaker 1: to me, not to me, said to a class, he said,
Speaker 1: I think it was Mr. Crew and the math class.
Speaker 1: He said, you know, and this may have been something
Speaker 1: he was doing to try to inspire students to use
Speaker 1: more their ability, but he said that you know, most
Speaker 1: people never use more than ten percent of their ability
Speaker 1: throughout their life, and and that they mostly hang out
Speaker 1: somewhere around three and a half, five and a half
Speaker 1: maybe six. And I was like, are you serious? I mean,
Speaker 1: tell me there's nine out there where, only with people
Speaker 1: who are trying to laugh at us, you know, because
Speaker 1: who were from Africa and this is what they're dealing off. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you very much. I'm glad to hear that kind
Speaker 1: of information because if there's nine, then I need to
Speaker 1: be busy and I need to never ever be worried
Speaker 1: about these fools who want to keep you down there?
Speaker 1: Did you start realizing that's when you have a headache,
Speaker 1: is when you try to go there to where somebody's
Speaker 1: level is to communicate to him, Hey, here it is
Speaker 1: the skies, the limit. You better go for it because
Speaker 1: all you get is all you got. You got is
Speaker 1: all you get, you know, and this is it. So
Speaker 1: when did you start playing an instrument? Oh? When I
Speaker 1: started sending it, you know. Then piano came somewhere around oh,
Speaker 1: I say, seven cades eight maybe eight years, eight years old,
Speaker 1: and teacher told my mother, you know, said said mildier,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't waste my money on teaching him, try and
Speaker 1: teach him how to play pio. She said, well, why
Speaker 1: is that? He said, because he already wants to play
Speaker 1: boogey woogie And once they get there, there ain't nothing
Speaker 1: you can do for, you know. So anyway, I tried
Speaker 1: that when piano tried clearing it for a while, um
Speaker 1: and then uh uh trombone, h harmonica m M. And
Speaker 1: then after the tragedy and my mother remarried. My stepfather
Speaker 1: was a Jamaican and uh he unbeknownst to me came
Speaker 1: to the house and he hid hire a guitar, and
Speaker 1: he was trying to learn how to play in the closet.
Speaker 1: And one day while the parents were out um making
Speaker 1: market or shopping. Um well, I I was put in
Speaker 1: charge of of the of the kids in the house
Speaker 1: and so keep them busy. We were playing a great
Speaker 1: game with hide and seek, and I hid in in
Speaker 1: the hall clock clothes closet, coat closet and got way
Speaker 1: back in there. Because it had the way it was
Speaker 1: set up and built in the house, you could get
Speaker 1: way back in the closet and even people moved the clothing,
Speaker 1: they couldn't see you. So I moved back in there
Speaker 1: and scooched way back in there, only to have my
Speaker 1: back go up against this critics curves. My eyes open wined,
Speaker 1: and go like, what what is this? You know, the
Speaker 1: only thing that could be is is an instrument. So
Speaker 1: I pulled the thing out. Oh my god, he's an
Speaker 1: arch top de Ol silver tone. I think it was
Speaker 1: guitar tobacco sunburst, you know, tobacco color was sunburst, you know,
Speaker 1: and all game over. You know, they can stay out
Speaker 1: there forever. I didn't. I didn't even connect I couldn't
Speaker 1: believe it, you know. And then I took it out
Speaker 1: of the case and there was a doorway across from
Speaker 1: the three ways three way. It was like, this is
Speaker 1: the closet door, This is the door to the dining room,
Speaker 1: This is the door to the placement. I go in
Speaker 1: there and pull that door closed and to put this
Speaker 1: thing out, and I could hear guitar music in my head.
Speaker 1: I knew that they were doing something. There's some Spanish music.
Speaker 1: Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. You know,
Speaker 1: you heard the different things. But how did they make
Speaker 1: music out of this system? I couldn't figure it out.
Speaker 1: And so I would, you know, break the teeth out
Speaker 1: of my mother's old combs, you know, and try to
Speaker 1: I knew that they used some kind of pick that
Speaker 1: much I did fingers, you know, chords. I don't know nothing,
Speaker 1: and so yeah, so I would go into that cellar
Speaker 1: door led down to the basement and sit there. And
Speaker 1: one day I'm sitting there totally spaced out over the
Speaker 1: door opens up. My stepfather says, well, I see you
Speaker 1: phoned it. And he never he never challenged me to
Speaker 1: put this thing back. It's it's is, don't touch it,
Speaker 1: leave it alone, don't leave the house with it. Never hasslee.
Speaker 1: And then you know, I mean, I mean you talk
Speaker 1: about luck. This is why I stay on my purpose
Speaker 1: because you know, it's a gift from your ancestors, you know,
Speaker 1: when they send you here, you know, to do your work.
Speaker 1: And most people don't think that way, and that's too bad.
Speaker 1: They have another guind of life, maybe worse than them.
Speaker 1: What works for me is that certain things that'll happen.
Speaker 1: My next door neighbor moved in his brother, older brother
Speaker 1: and sister in law. We're friends of my dad's and
Speaker 1: my mom's, you know, and he moved in next door.
Speaker 1: He and his younger broke. Then next story was family
Speaker 1: and fourteen from North Carolina, Lynn Perry, Lynn, Lynn Winner
Speaker 1: and Leonard Perry. We used to call them Lynwood. The
Speaker 1: man can play guitar, yea, no one can play guitar.
Speaker 1: He played that really route beautiful blues guitar from down
Speaker 1: there and in North Carolina. And you know, over the fence.
Speaker 1: One day we just started talking, you know, and you know,
Speaker 1: boys bragging, oto bragging, Well what you do well, man,
Speaker 1: I do this, well? What about you. I do that. Well,
Speaker 1: you got a bicycle, Yeah, I got a wheel. You
Speaker 1: know I got a wheel too. You know. You play baseball, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I get here, I catch well. Oh yeah, you got
Speaker 1: a glove. Yeah, I gotta glove. You got a ball, yeah,
Speaker 1: well I got a batman. I got a glove with.
Speaker 1: Sometimes we're going down the lockdown streets. Then you hit
Speaker 1: something to me, I hit something to you. You know,
Speaker 1: blah blah blah. You play marbles, yeah, so far he saw.
Speaker 1: Well I play guitar. This is what he says. And
Speaker 1: I said, well, I gotta guitar. He said, well, let
Speaker 1: me see that guitar. So I went in the house
Speaker 1: and brought it out, you know. And he looked at
Speaker 1: me and said, you got a pair of flies. And
Speaker 1: I said yeah, so we've got a pair of flies.
Speaker 1: And he unwinds the wound g string and then he
Speaker 1: proceeds to take it all the winding off the string,
Speaker 1: and he listen to me. He said, that is how
Speaker 1: you make it talk. Okay, that's the next door. His
Speaker 1: brother in law was Arthur big boy credits. Yeah next door,
Speaker 1: I mean, okay, Oh as good as that, guess. Mississippi
Speaker 1: still comes in down the block and around the corner,
Speaker 1: you know, was the Nichols family, and you would not
Speaker 1: even believe they were from stove All Plantation, Mississippi. Okay.
Speaker 1: So I could literally go up the street and here
Speaker 1: here Junior Nichols or Ernest Ernest with a guitar player.
Speaker 1: Junior could play something, but Ernest set up and play
Speaker 1: boogie schilling like he was John Lee Oker, you know.
Speaker 1: And this was and not only that Ernest was Ernest
Speaker 1: was Jake a car radio, a battery and Jerry rig
Speaker 1: D speech speakers, and he'd have an amplifier, you know,
Speaker 1: con turned up around, turned down cock, I mean, had
Speaker 1: great song and he became a really a really a
Speaker 1: great guitar player. He's no longer with us, Yeah, and
Speaker 1: neither is Lynn Perry. But those two guys, you know,
Speaker 1: mostly Lynn, you know, give me my initiation into the
Speaker 1: music that I love. I love was I was love
Speaker 1: Jimmy Read Love Love Love Love Jimmy Read. I canna
Speaker 1: play that music, you know forever, still their songs of his.
Speaker 1: I still want to play workout with the band, y know,
Speaker 1: amongst them, as like to call Little Ray. I never
Speaker 1: you know, I think I think only the last Bose
Speaker 1: album that um Mick Jagger and them guys did. They
Speaker 1: did little Ray hard tune to do before, as simple
Speaker 1: as it is. But yeah, you know, so I got
Speaker 1: to play guitar and you know, doing this and singing
Speaker 1: with little singing groups and whatnot. You know, I think
Speaker 1: the big you know, and listening to lots of music. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, all this is coming on. Not that I
Speaker 1: knew what their name was, but the Weavers with Goodnight Irene,
Speaker 1: you know, the Terriers, y know, the all these different
Speaker 1: and you know, Harry Belafonte big in our house, you know,
Speaker 1: because so stepfather bringing you know, Mento, you know, and
Speaker 1: all those kinds of music. You know, there were Trinity
Speaker 1: Dadiens in our town, you know, people from Auckland, you know,
Speaker 1: Puerto Rico, Cuba. You know. So it was a lot.
Speaker 1: There was a lot to listen to, a lot to feel,
Speaker 1: you know. But I felt really strong about the blues,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, represented decide that my mother
Speaker 1: game bro you know South. So did you play out
Speaker 1: when you were in high school or was it just
Speaker 1: a hobby? No? I never was a hobby. I mean,
Speaker 1: um uh no, not not too not too much, not
Speaker 1: too much fun. I mean, I think we said we
Speaker 1: had some more singing groups. Was out playing get to
Speaker 1: For me, it was like a personal thing, you know,
Speaker 1: not even a hobby, but something that I was trying
Speaker 1: to find where that where you where you where the
Speaker 1: line was that you could continue, know, just get in
Speaker 1: there and get involved and be continue to move forward,
Speaker 1: you know. And I'd say that one of the big
Speaker 1: one of the big moves came uh when I was
Speaker 1: you know, I studied, I studied uh cat of my
Speaker 1: husbandry and minor inventionary science and achronomy when I had
Speaker 1: dairy technology when I went to the un University of Massachusetts.
Speaker 1: And I also had three years from tenth grade to
Speaker 1: the twelfth cade in vocational and agriculture high school classes.
Speaker 1: So you know, I had I had a different balance
Speaker 1: than a lot of the other kids. Did you know.
Speaker 1: We didn't have to be in school until the crops
Speaker 1: were in, like say early late late October, early November,
Speaker 1: and we got out of school um uh in March,
Speaker 1: so you start plowing preparing the lands. I like that
Speaker 1: a lot. Three months whintos off of him April, May
Speaker 1: and June, you know, with off of the year or
Speaker 1: maybe this September October anyway, so you didn't have to
Speaker 1: go to school that much, maybe a little bit over
Speaker 1: four months a year. I love that. In the rest
Speaker 1: of the time, you know, you're out on tractors around
Speaker 1: the animals up in the country. You know, I'm a
Speaker 1: gonna say something about my my mom and dad. Probably
Speaker 1: the thing that really let me out to the country
Speaker 1: a lot was that my dad used to take my
Speaker 1: mom out to the country and there and we all
Speaker 1: go take driving the country, you know, you leave out
Speaker 1: and they all of a sudden everything opened up, spaces
Speaker 1: opened up, more room between farms, you know, gardens, you know, vegetables, hands.
Speaker 1: You know. My mother would go out and they buy big,
Speaker 1: big push your baskets and create some corn and beans
Speaker 1: and all that. And she come back and and we
Speaker 1: help her, you know, put you know, snap the beans
Speaker 1: and do this and help her prepare stuff. And she
Speaker 1: had she put a lot of you know, food up
Speaker 1: for the weather she can't, did a lot of cannon
Speaker 1: and made jellies, and you know, that's that kind of
Speaker 1: stuff where I want, I wanted just just a wonderful
Speaker 1: person in terms of you know, nourishing. Her family had
Speaker 1: had a really you know, positive and and delectable level,
Speaker 1: you know. And in fact, I remember sixteen when I
Speaker 1: started to work and go other places. So I had
Speaker 1: to really tell myself, now, you know, you're not gonna
Speaker 1: find it like like you got it here at all
Speaker 1: everyone else, So you know, just just be nice and
Speaker 1: enjoy which eat what you can eat. You eat what
Speaker 1: you what you like. So did you want to go
Speaker 1: to college or family said you should go to college?
Speaker 1: And how did you end up studying agriculture? Was that
Speaker 1: just something you picked? You said, no, I want to
Speaker 1: be a farmer? Mm hmm. I looked at it from
Speaker 1: the point answer accept with different questions evolved about farming.
Speaker 1: I saw that African people and and our most cultural
Speaker 1: situation agriculture. Music. Agriculture was one of the reasons that
Speaker 1: we were in the Western hemisphere. This is why people
Speaker 1: picked us to be here. Music was something that we
Speaker 1: brought along with us, which is what we did. And
Speaker 1: that was the old impact I was telling you know,
Speaker 1: the hard drive was erased, but some people do enough
Speaker 1: to tell their children about who they were before the
Speaker 1: hard drive got raised. For most people, so I was
Speaker 1: aware of myself and and my dad had worked, and
Speaker 1: part of the reason that we lost him was that
Speaker 1: he was the type of person that stood up. I
Speaker 1: didn't care what the consequences was. This might have been
Speaker 1: a better place where he could have going along to
Speaker 1: get along, but on principal he couldn't do it, and
Speaker 1: that wasn't who he was. Stood up they fired him.
Speaker 1: He was working on trying to um create a h
Speaker 1: what do you want to call? You want to create
Speaker 1: a his own business, independent business. You wanted to have
Speaker 1: a contracting business. That's why I had have you have
Speaker 1: you equipment around the stuff that busually you know, um,
Speaker 1: you know, cause his demand and those are the kind
Speaker 1: of energies that were passed to me about, you know,
Speaker 1: being independent and doing anything. But the knowledge that you know,
Speaker 1: music was something that we did. We used use it
Speaker 1: to make our our long walks go, our work go,
Speaker 1: all of those things. None of this was lost on
Speaker 1: the colonialists, you know, none of this was lost on
Speaker 1: the dominant culture who was building building themselves up, you know,
Speaker 1: the Western hemisphere, you know. So but for me, knowing
Speaker 1: that these things were, we're something that we were predisposed to.
Speaker 1: At first, I wasn't interested in going to college. I
Speaker 1: felt I could go to the um the elders and
Speaker 1: I could, um, you know, learned from them. But then
Speaker 1: something came across my mind said, well, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: maybe there's something here that you might be able to use.
Speaker 1: And why while you're young And as my mother used
Speaker 1: to say, father used to say, you don't have child
Speaker 1: nor chick. You know what, you know, you it might
Speaker 1: get smart thing to go and do this college thing.
Speaker 1: And and then you know, by that time, my stepfather
Speaker 1: was saying that I look because I said I didn't.
Speaker 1: I wasn't interested in Lord and and not on yet,
Speaker 1: I was not interested in Gordon for what it was
Speaker 1: that they wanted me to go for, you know, not
Speaker 1: that they did anything that, but I was just saying
Speaker 1: that if I'm gonna go, it's gonna be one I
Speaker 1: want to go for, you know. And uh So by
Speaker 1: that point in time, um, I had made a decision.
Speaker 1: I think between the seventh and the ninth grade to
Speaker 1: the eighth grade I made and ask about, you know,
Speaker 1: wanting to go to a vocation agriculture school. And they said, hey,
Speaker 1: well you asked the eighth grade in the ninth grade,
Speaker 1: you still want to do it. Well, we'll work on that,
Speaker 1: and they did, and I didn't get to go. And
Speaker 1: but now I'm going to college. And you know, my
Speaker 1: idea was that, you know these two things, music in agriculture.
Speaker 1: People are never gonna never gonna not have it, never
Speaker 1: gonna not use it, never never gonna be a part
Speaker 1: of it. And you don't like today it'd be you
Speaker 1: raise organic vegetables, organic meats, you or you know, fruits,
Speaker 1: you know, all those kind of things. You know, some
Speaker 1: of the information about this with things that she'd find
Speaker 1: out back in those days, you know. And so yeah,
Speaker 1: you know that I figured that, hey, either I could
Speaker 1: make a living, you know, being in agriculture, play music
Speaker 1: on the weekend, make a living in music, and maybe
Speaker 1: by myself a farm. You know. I just was like
Speaker 1: it was important to me to be my own boss
Speaker 1: and to be independent, made my own decision. So you're
Speaker 1: going to you Massey Amhurst in the sixties, relatively early sixties,
Speaker 1: but it's still a turbulent time. The folks scene is happening.
Speaker 1: What was it like in college? And you also started
Speaker 1: to play out when you were in college for money, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we did a little bit of that before, but it
Speaker 1: was only mostly like kind of do up, you know,
Speaker 1: you're not kind of like four or five musicians of
Speaker 1: the band, you know, a group of singing, maybe out
Speaker 1: of piano player, maybe one of the guys playing guitar.
Speaker 1: You know, you know I did that, But yeah, I
Speaker 1: didn't really start playing off. I started playing out mostly
Speaker 1: in the in the college set, you know, smith Hammer's College, Um,
Speaker 1: rinsel Ere, uh code you know, I'm not cool game
Speaker 1: cornell Um, Dartmouth Jops, you know u UM, you know Live,
Speaker 1: you know, University of Vermont, you know a lot of
Speaker 1: different prep schools. You know, how are you getting the gigs? Oh,
Speaker 1: it's really cool. We had um there was a band
Speaker 1: called the Lectures and it was to rock and Wayne
Speaker 1: Elliott and a guy named Marcel Crudel and uh piano
Speaker 1: player damn e is that guy's name? He was Steve.
Speaker 1: I don't know Steve's last name. Then there was a
Speaker 1: saxophone player named Ray a sueser and um a drummer
Speaker 1: named Don Littlefield who was a business major and Don um. Oh,
Speaker 1: and then they had a singer I cannot think of
Speaker 1: win his name was. He flunked out. So I was
Speaker 1: up in the music room met fiddling around with the piano,
Speaker 1: and by then, you know, a bunch of us and
Speaker 1: bumped into one another on campus, found out who likes
Speaker 1: to play music? Who I'm played? You know, we we
Speaker 1: have a couple of times. This is when first cut
Speaker 1: on campus. A bunchet us got together and the girls
Speaker 1: had to be in I think by seven o'clock, six
Speaker 1: o'clock and no visitors in a dorman. They were set
Speaker 1: up in a kind of a natural campa theater. There's
Speaker 1: tour I think there's two four four or six you
Speaker 1: know blocks um dormitories for the girls. And so a
Speaker 1: bunch of us would get out there with bongos and
Speaker 1: guitars and corn monicas and mandolin's and fiddles and you know,
Speaker 1: call a tune and play it and you know kind
Speaker 1: of like entertain you know. But they had a music
Speaker 1: room that had three pianos in it, so I was
Speaker 1: I had to figure that got a piano here, got
Speaker 1: a lot of time to really kind of work on
Speaker 1: some of these tunes. So by then some guys that
Speaker 1: see me around playing and this, uh, this guy Don Littlefield,
Speaker 1: the the drummer and business major, came in and said, hey,
Speaker 1: I mean I hear you you you're you're a singer,
Speaker 1: and I said, well, sing a little bit and play.
Speaker 1: He said, well, look, our our lead singer flumped out
Speaker 1: this semester. You know, we've got some gigs. You know, um,
Speaker 1: maybe you can come down and we could play something together,
Speaker 1: you know. So I, you know, dressed up and came
Speaker 1: down to this fraternity house. And it was kind of
Speaker 1: hard for me to play with you know, two guitars
Speaker 1: and no bass, piano player, saxophone, and a drummer. I
Speaker 1: had not really heard that kind of music where you
Speaker 1: didn't you didn't have a drum Well that's not true.
Speaker 1: That can go without a drummer, but that music that
Speaker 1: they were trying to play definitely needed a drummer in it.
Speaker 1: But and the bass player. I'm not a drummer, but
Speaker 1: a bass player. That was what was missing. And so
Speaker 1: you know, they, uh, I came down there. So then
Speaker 1: I started making started bringing all the material that I
Speaker 1: knew that they didn't know, all this R and D
Speaker 1: and you know, oh jump blues, and they then I said,
Speaker 1: you know what, we need a bass player. And they
Speaker 1: found this guy, Jack brand Well. I didn't think much
Speaker 1: of him at first had terrible sounding bass, and so
Speaker 1: then oh just terrible. It's okay, I mean it could
Speaker 1: have sounded good. What you needed to take it to
Speaker 1: Louthier and have the next straight now and you know
Speaker 1: the things set up on it. Um. But anyway, I
Speaker 1: suggested to those guys they needed to get some Fender,
Speaker 1: some Fender guitars, you know. And so eventually we put
Speaker 1: together a kiddy with you know, the gigs that we
Speaker 1: were making, and Marcel bought a Fender guitar and Bay
Speaker 1: and amp and Jack Moran bought a Fender bass. Bam.
Speaker 1: Sounded like new money. But anyway, Don Littlefield was the
Speaker 1: business major and he made the band like kind of
Speaker 1: like his his um you know. Well anyway, he's he
Speaker 1: was a businessman. And our big move, big move came
Speaker 1: when he went and played went and attended of Smith
Speaker 1: College mixer, which gathered all of the men's colleges on
Speaker 1: the northeast, and sin of you know flyers out to
Speaker 1: them saying they've got this big mixer, come on up,
Speaker 1: blah blah blah. So all these guys came up and
Speaker 1: he went and passed out our business guard. You know,
Speaker 1: rock and roll goes the Electra's rock and roll goes
Speaker 1: to college with the secret ingredient, and I was the
Speaker 1: secret ingredient. And uh and we had like three three
Speaker 1: incredible years of playing music and traveling around New England.
Speaker 1: Got out as far as spenn State. You know some
Speaker 1: things in New Jersey, you know, Connecticut, you know, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Vermont, Maine,
Speaker 1: and upstate New York. As I say, know a little
Speaker 1: bit of New Jersey and in Pennsylvania. So yeah, a
Speaker 1: little Field got all the gigs. Manily, we did well.
Speaker 1: He did really good, did very well. So whatever happened
Speaker 1: to Little Field, Uh he became a minister. I was
Speaker 1: just talking to him not too long ago. He didn't
Speaker 1: he didn't follow Almost almost none of those guys followed
Speaker 1: music because they were they played music aside for what
Speaker 1: you do. Marcel Crudel was a forestry and landscape landscaping guy.
Speaker 1: Um Ray Susan was an English teacher. Um Um Jack
Speaker 1: Moran he was. He ended up being a PD a pediatrician.
Speaker 1: Um see. Another guy was um Chucky Reid. He played
Speaker 1: saxophone with us. He was a uh pizzed major. The
Speaker 1: guys eve he was a poet. Nobody knew where he went,
Speaker 1: you know, and went like that. Okay, so you graduated
Speaker 1: from college then what by then? I was playing music
Speaker 1: and and um, you know I'm not only not only
Speaker 1: was I dealing with with the music that we were
Speaker 1: playing in college, but you know, I, you know, I
Speaker 1: just as I said, decided that whenever I was doing
Speaker 1: music would be on the side or in the front. However,
Speaker 1: I was going to continue to play music because there's
Speaker 1: things that wanted to learn. And I didn't care whether
Speaker 1: it was I was popular at him or not, or
Speaker 1: it could make a living at it or not, you know,
Speaker 1: whichever whichever worked. And so yeah, I got I was
Speaker 1: working a lot up in in um In and around Boston,
Speaker 1: and uh, I got myself at the age it you know,
Speaker 1: Manny green Hill and Full Core Productions, and he got
Speaker 1: lots of gigs for me, you know. And UH hooked
Speaker 1: up with this guy Jessie leeken Kaide and came out
Speaker 1: to California because he was playing some music from Roy Couter.
Speaker 1: Yeah it's just sounded too much like blind Board Fuller,
Speaker 1: It's right. And I found out he was like seventeen
Speaker 1: years old. Who is this kid? All right? Well, we
Speaker 1: need to go again, we get him out here, I
Speaker 1: guess we have to go to California and that's what
Speaker 1: we did. So when you were playing after college? Was
Speaker 1: it a solo actor? Do you have beans? What was it? No?
Speaker 1: Pretty much a due me and this other guy Jessie Lincoln.
Speaker 1: The tourists played guitar, somethime. I played harmonica t r
Speaker 1: sometimes dim So what year do you move to l A?
Speaker 1: And how do you end up finding and how do
Speaker 1: you end up finding Roy couter guys? As I said,
Speaker 1: the guy that that I uh um hung out with
Speaker 1: up in Cambridge, know him Capron California, know him and
Speaker 1: could play some stuff that he learned from saying, if
Speaker 1: somebody could teach you that. I'm listening to all these
Speaker 1: other guys around here, and they know sounding like that,
Speaker 1: that sounds like the music. So you moved to l A.
Speaker 1: Where are you living? Do you immediately start playing out?
Speaker 1: I mean you need money to live? What's going on?
Speaker 1: I had seen I had a paper route that had
Speaker 1: six hundred, six hundred papers every morning, and like I said,
Speaker 1: I had a garden dog wife, you know, a couple
Speaker 1: of guitars and banjo, you know, and uh some harmonicas
Speaker 1: you know, just about make the rent, you know, and uh,
Speaker 1: I'm really happy, you know, dizzy and listen to a
Speaker 1: lot of music, went through a lot of music. Used
Speaker 1: to work at the Ash Grove in Los Angeles. You
Speaker 1: know it's the bouncer, doorman, cedar greeter sometimes the open
Speaker 1: enact when somebody didn't show up. How many steps were
Speaker 1: there before the Rising Sun's steps? How many other bands
Speaker 1: were there? Or you were played? That was it from
Speaker 1: the other band? I mean Jesse, Jesse and Jessie and
Speaker 1: we we What happened was that Ryan was connected with
Speaker 1: a place called McCabe's guitar store, and McCabe's there was
Speaker 1: a something called the Teenage Fair that was happening here
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles, and the big players were we're studying
Speaker 1: and share and that's what was the big thing going
Speaker 1: on then. And maybe Red Bone Pat and Lolly Vegas
Speaker 1: you know him, and no different other people around town.
Speaker 1: And we got to be a part of the Martin
Speaker 1: Guitar Companies booth that Martin it took a little shot
Speaker 1: at trying to make electric guitars and uh so Jesse
Speaker 1: Lee played drugs. Gary Marker who we met played bass
Speaker 1: where I played slide guitar. I played guitar with harmonica
Speaker 1: on Iraq and we just played and played the grooves
Speaker 1: we knew and that was that was one in the
Speaker 1: net and the next thing. Uh yeah, we started pulling
Speaker 1: different people in just to try to create this group.
Speaker 1: First drummer was Ed Cassidy, who went on to play
Speaker 1: with Spirit and man also was the oldest living rock
Speaker 1: drummer for some time. And yeah, you know, and then
Speaker 1: we started recording. How did you get your deal with Columbia?
Speaker 1: They came out to see us artist, Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: I thought we had potential or maybe we're we were
Speaker 1: too much competition for certain bands out there, and they
Speaker 1: put us on the label and just you know, we
Speaker 1: you know, I mean the first album never came out,
Speaker 1: you know, so you never know what that's what they did.
Speaker 1: I noticed what they did with the Beatles, you know,
Speaker 1: side of every possible group that would give them any
Speaker 1: competition and then shove them and then put those guys
Speaker 1: out there, you know. So I don't know, I never
Speaker 1: I don't sit around and worry about conspiracy theories. Is
Speaker 1: that we you know, we we found ourselves in the
Speaker 1: studio making music, you know, but we also found on
Speaker 1: a not of you know, music business politics, craziness that
Speaker 1: didn't have nothing to do with music. So how disappointing
Speaker 1: and disillusioning was it to get a deal, make a
Speaker 1: record and have the record never come out? Um? Hey,
Speaker 1: uh it was. It was disappointing, but that was just
Speaker 1: that was just part for the chorus. My friend, they
Speaker 1: have things that were certainly certainly a lot worse. I mean,
Speaker 1: it wasn't that that wasn't like that all we rolled
Speaker 1: off our backs, but you know, we had you had
Speaker 1: you had to make it, you had to go forward. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so how did you end up as a solo
Speaker 1: artist on Columbia? Call up the correct president of the
Speaker 1: record company and told him I was on his label,
Speaker 1: and I was signed with a group, and I was
Speaker 1: signed as an individual, and I had some ideas. Called
Speaker 1: up climb dave Is. Talked to his secretary, told her
Speaker 1: what I told her my story. She said, well, all right,
Speaker 1: she says, Mr Davis isn't here now, but I'll give
Speaker 1: him your message maybe through. Two or three hours later
Speaker 1: he called me back. I spoke to him, told him
Speaker 1: what I was, what I was up to him. What
Speaker 1: I wanted to do, you know. Um, and you know,
Speaker 1: maybe I made a mistakes saying I wanted to produce
Speaker 1: my own music, you know, and you know, but that
Speaker 1: was the point he said that. Kylie said that, well,
Speaker 1: that wasn't their policy. You know, after after the Silence
Speaker 1: of the Universe, came back with a you know, it
Speaker 1: wasn't their policy. But if if, if it'll be okay,
Speaker 1: send out they was, you know, put the money to
Speaker 1: send out some producers. And first one they sent out,
Speaker 1: we hit it off. And that was David Rubens heard
Speaker 1: from him today. David, Oh, yeah, hear from out a
Speaker 1: regular basis. Yeah, good guy. Yeah, and and and we
Speaker 1: got involved in first he had to figure out what
Speaker 1: was happening and how much he had to be involved
Speaker 1: in putting the music together. And then he began to
Speaker 1: realize that, no, this guy knows what he wants to do,
Speaker 1: and he left me alone. He did the business. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, everybody talks about uh jay Z and uh
Speaker 1: Damon dash Us being one guy did the business and
Speaker 1: one guy did the music, and that's the modern version
Speaker 1: of it. But David Rubister did it back in those days.
Speaker 1: You know, he pushed pushed the nay of his artist
Speaker 1: students to the company because he knew what was going on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so the album comes out, what's it like on your
Speaker 1: side of the fence. I only know the consumer side
Speaker 1: of the fence. Well, I'm glad that, I'm glad. I'm glad. Well.
Speaker 1: First of all, um, I was looking for a really
Speaker 1: good guitar player, you know, somebody who I could translate
Speaker 1: these old songs too, and really was coming down it
Speaker 1: with a fresh approach. And that guy turned out to
Speaker 1: be Jesse Davis, native American brother commitson incredible guitar, used
Speaker 1: to play with Zappa, yeah, amongst amongst others. And uh
Speaker 1: he heard him and said, okay one and I wouldn't
Speaker 1: play play with Roy Coonter knew he could play too,
Speaker 1: So now I need a drummer and a bass player. Um.
Speaker 1: And I heard a guy named James Broadway Thomas, and
Speaker 1: you know, and then a guy named Sandy Conical who's
Speaker 1: playing with a band called General Soul. Um, James James Thomas,
Speaker 1: Jimmie Thomas's played with like Big Mama Thornton, Uh with
Speaker 1: Albert King. Um. Oh, the guys they can't sit down.
Speaker 1: Um anyway, Uh, yeah, he played with some really cool guys,
Speaker 1: and uh so I thought that, you know, he he'd
Speaker 1: be a good bass player, and he and he was,
Speaker 1: and and that's all I had. And they had some
Speaker 1: They gave me some days to come and play, and
Speaker 1: I came into the studio and brought the material that
Speaker 1: I had in my head. Nobody had ever heard anything, right,
Speaker 1: was probably the only one that heard heard any of
Speaker 1: the original material from the original artists. But what we
Speaker 1: did that day was something different, you know. And so
Speaker 1: I just would dictate parts the way I wanted the
Speaker 1: drummer to play and the way I wanted the bass
Speaker 1: player to play. Never said anything to Ride, never said
Speaker 1: anything to Davis, because I knew they could play and
Speaker 1: set it up and that squaw you here on that
Speaker 1: leaving trumble when that harmonica comes in. There is nobody
Speaker 1: else who plays it like that. You can listen every
Speaker 1: harmonica player you know. And it all came from something
Speaker 1: that Lewis Myers taught me. He said, he said, he said,
Speaker 1: you're real good, he said, but you're playing too many notes.
Speaker 1: He said, listen to this. He said, I'm gonna play
Speaker 1: to you one more time, one time, and I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna play it again, and he plays something in my
Speaker 1: ear that it's a signature in my monica playing to
Speaker 1: this day playing octaves. How long did it take to
Speaker 1: make this record? A few days? So the record comes out?
Speaker 1: You sold your own case, just Clive Davis? Uh, what happened?
Speaker 1: They put you on the road to support it? And
Speaker 1: what was you know? Yeah, I mean a little bit.
Speaker 1: It came dribbling in. We weren't We weren't. Really, I wasn't.
Speaker 1: You know, it's Ahl playing blues for guys who had
Speaker 1: been in the record business. You know, you know I didn't.
Speaker 1: I wasn't playing whatever the new hip black music was.
Speaker 1: Not that I couldn't, not that I didn't listen to it,
Speaker 1: and I thought that I didn't support those artists. You know.
Speaker 1: Um but um, you know, um, we kind of got
Speaker 1: got in where we we got in where they finished in.
Speaker 1: You know, we did some stuff. You know, we're in
Speaker 1: the you know, the the raggedy pan, the raggedy panel
Speaker 1: truck tours. You know, looking at the street, going underneath
Speaker 1: the cars you're driving down the road. You know, we
Speaker 1: did all that. You know, a little by a little
Speaker 1: by little got better, got better, got better. Probably got
Speaker 1: the second record down. It was that great. Let's talk
Speaker 1: about the second record. The second record they let you
Speaker 1: do alone and there's a lot more original material on
Speaker 1: the second record. Yeah, that was the idea. And so
Speaker 1: had you always been writing? Um yeah, attempting to anyway?
Speaker 1: So on the second album, she caught the Katie, which
Speaker 1: of course was in the Blues Brothers movie. So can
Speaker 1: you tell us about writing that song and about getting
Speaker 1: it in the movie? Um, yes, addressing everybody likes that
Speaker 1: because because all of that, I like she Contuccatie too.
Speaker 1: But I'm absolutely really there. I'm I'm using pretty even
Speaker 1: about everything. I love all of all the tunes of
Speaker 1: that record. You know, but you know, as an artist,
Speaker 1: you always that's something you like, it, something you don't like,
Speaker 1: not doubt like, but you could wish you could do it.
Speaker 1: Go back in there and do those two notes better anyway?
Speaker 1: Um yo, Oh she caught to Katie. That's really interesting.
Speaker 1: See she show on me something. Um, you know, like
Speaker 1: you said as a consumer, Um yeah, I mean the
Speaker 1: tune itself. I'd heard it from a guy named Steve Man,
Speaker 1: and he didn't know where he got it from. So
Speaker 1: I had sleepy John Sts and Yank Rachel out to
Speaker 1: my house and they were there for maybe a month
Speaker 1: month and a half while they were working, you know,
Speaker 1: got working working out here on the West Coast. And
Speaker 1: I was talking to Yank one day and he was
Speaker 1: and we were just still this men talking and uh say, yeah, man,
Speaker 1: my second wife you know, no, no, my first wife
Speaker 1: blah blah blah blah. Yeah, she called to k and
Speaker 1: left me a mule to ride. I said, I said,
Speaker 1: I said where. He said why? You know, he said,
Speaker 1: I've been saying that something that since I was a
Speaker 1: little youngster. So I realized that there was a lot
Speaker 1: of tunes out there that didn't have any yo direct
Speaker 1: uh composer. You know, like if if Big Joe nine
Speaker 1: string Big Joe had had done the thing, he wouldn't
Speaker 1: put out baby, Baby, Please Don't Go. You know, that
Speaker 1: was his tool. But you know, he didn't copyright it,
Speaker 1: so a lot of people got to play it, and
Speaker 1: they got to go into public domain anyway, So this
Speaker 1: song was in public domain, and uh, you know, it
Speaker 1: was up for grabs. So I put a lot of
Speaker 1: different lyrics on it. And and remember the lyrics that
Speaker 1: he anked it, so you know, I went into partnership
Speaker 1: on the composer, the composer of that song when he
Speaker 1: ain't Grachel and he was able to say both his
Speaker 1: daughter to nursing school and nursing college and his granddaughter
Speaker 1: to college on that on the strength of that record alone.
Speaker 1: And as far as getting it in the Blues Brothers movie,
Speaker 1: Tackery and Beluci called me up and I said, hey,
Speaker 1: we want to do your your your your tune in
Speaker 1: the movie, he said, and we want to make sure
Speaker 1: we ask it. Would that be all right? Said? Hey,
Speaker 1: go for it? Okay. At this point, do you still
Speaker 1: own your own publishing? You still do it? And do
Speaker 1: you ever receive any record royalties? Are you still in
Speaker 1: the red with these record companies? Never? Well, I don't
Speaker 1: know what I'm in. I just know that over the
Speaker 1: years I've I've received royalties, But the record I know
Speaker 1: that that the the the way it works nowadays, it
Speaker 1: probably isn't as good as it used to be. Okay,
Speaker 1: So now you go act to working with David Rubenson.
Speaker 1: How did you decide to do that? No, I didn't
Speaker 1: go I was always working with him. I worked with
Speaker 1: him for the basically mm hmm, pretty much up until
Speaker 1: for about the first five records, you know, tis the
Speaker 1: Home Natural Blues, Giant Step, um the real thing, and
Speaker 1: Happy just to be like I am? And then Sounder,
Speaker 1: Who's so Gooden Bluze? Uh excuse uh, Sounder Recycling the Blues?
Speaker 1: Whoso Gooden Blues? I started, I started producing all those
Speaker 1: on my own, and then from there on I produced
Speaker 1: everything up until um well about Yeah, okay, so you
Speaker 1: put out a double album Take a Giant Step. Now,
Speaker 1: the Monkeys were huge and even though they didn't write
Speaker 1: the song was a Golfing Kings song. Were you aware
Speaker 1: of that version? How did you decide to cut Take
Speaker 1: a Giant Step? Terry Melcher, who was Marty Melcher and
Speaker 1: Doris day Son was given a job of being a
Speaker 1: producer at staff producer at Columbia Records when the Rising
Speaker 1: Suns were put on the Columbia label. First It's they
Speaker 1: brought out Alan Step to try to record us, and
Speaker 1: he couldn't make any sense of it, and then they
Speaker 1: brought Terry Melcher, and Melcher brought Giant Step. Yeah you
Speaker 1: know with the monkeys, I mean, right and okay, and
Speaker 1: so we tried to cut maybe a little bit more
Speaker 1: stronger rock with a little bit of R and B
Speaker 1: energy in it, and you know, um and cut it
Speaker 1: with the rising suns. But one time, when I'm saying,
Speaker 1: while I was singing, I sartously, you know what, this
Speaker 1: song would sound really great if it was song slower,
Speaker 1: you know, and I get the mind of a jazz musician,
Speaker 1: you know, and I didn't realize that's what it was.
Speaker 1: You know, they'll take a song and turn it into
Speaker 1: a ballad, you know, rearrange it, you know, free to
Speaker 1: do that this music. So yeah, I just change it up,
Speaker 1: put it in the temple that I put it in.
Speaker 1: It sounded great. Yeah. So was there any blowback about
Speaker 1: wanting to do a double album from the company if
Speaker 1: there was. If there was, I'm sure that David Rubinson
Speaker 1: covered it and it never got back to me. Okay,
Speaker 1: how do you end up making the famous live album
Speaker 1: with the multi tubas with Howard Johnson. It's got all
Speaker 1: those tubas and it's also cut lot. Why Why does
Speaker 1: everybody freak out when when somebody's when somebody comes to
Speaker 1: creative and constantly is creating, is as if they think
Speaker 1: that they know that they can't be this much. You
Speaker 1: gotta stop at some point you know, Oh, don't are
Speaker 1: you kidding me? Oh, here's another one. I never heard this.
Speaker 1: I don't get I don't get it. You know this
Speaker 1: this is this is America, the land or free. This
Speaker 1: is opportunity. So I'm taking opportunity to Opportunity comes knocking
Speaker 1: and I'm I show up. It shows up, and everybody
Speaker 1: goes like, oh my god, how did that happen? You
Speaker 1: got you gotta imagine it from my point of view, Okay,
Speaker 1: because you've got more, you got more, You got more
Speaker 1: folks on your side of the pends. Who are who are?
Speaker 1: Just there goes that confounded tig wall again, Wells, was
Speaker 1: there any pressure for sale? And did you feel an obligation?
Speaker 1: We're just following your muse or where you worrying? And
Speaker 1: I was, no, I wasn't a mine if I wash it?
Speaker 1: Worried about commerciality if those guys here play some of
Speaker 1: that garbage that they put out there, what you you
Speaker 1: know you understand me. It's just here's the clear here's
Speaker 1: the clear, clear clearing presiety. Those guys could think that
Speaker 1: that garbage that they were putting out there, and I'm
Speaker 1: not calling the names, you know, is at that and
Speaker 1: that what I was doing with garbage, and it couldn't
Speaker 1: go out there and have the same movement. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't know what was going on inside the business,
Speaker 1: where people blocking it or people keeping it down, because
Speaker 1: now everybody acts it's like, oh my god, you can't
Speaker 1: imagine what it was like to me. You know, you
Speaker 1: were my savior, you saved, you saved my parents marriage,
Speaker 1: Gariet step. I mean, on and on and on and
Speaker 1: on and on, and I go like, okay, and here
Speaker 1: I was scuffling and scrambling and spending time away from
Speaker 1: my family, trying to make a living, you know, and
Speaker 1: I'm listening to this garbage that they're they're putting all
Speaker 1: the money behind it. Weren't putting the money behind me,
Speaker 1: and like they would put them behind the other guys.
Speaker 1: I just said, you know what, hey, if that's what
Speaker 1: it is, that's too bad. That is not a reason
Speaker 1: for you to stop playing good music. You know, why
Speaker 1: what am I gonna do compromise myself? You know, it's
Speaker 1: like and you know, and be a whole for bad music.
Speaker 1: I don't think so. You know, so whatever whatever they said,
Speaker 1: they never got it never got to me. I mean,
Speaker 1: little things like, well, I think that you know, you don't,
Speaker 1: you're not really a black artist. I was like, oh really, okay,
Speaker 1: well tell that to the Africans that all come and
Speaker 1: have my records, or the Jamaicans or the trunt Adians
Speaker 1: or the Brazilian You tell me about that, you know,
Speaker 1: And of course they have no, They have never had
Speaker 1: an answer. You know. What it is is that you
Speaker 1: know the A lot of it is is that I
Speaker 1: show you show people flat out that it's about independent thought,
Speaker 1: and that's not what they were looking. They wanted people
Speaker 1: who would go along to get along. I've never been
Speaker 1: that guy. I'm not. It's not gonna happen. My kids
Speaker 1: don't do it either. Okay, let's go sideways a little bit.
Speaker 1: I was talking to Bonnie Read and the third album
Speaker 1: Taking My Time she was making with Lowell George, and
Speaker 1: Lowell wanted to play all the slide parts. He said
Speaker 1: no way, got rid of him and said, she called
Speaker 1: you and brought you into help making the record. Does
Speaker 1: that you remember that experience experienced that John Hall called
Speaker 1: me up okay and asked me to help out, And yeah,
Speaker 1: he ultimately got certain credit, but she really played up
Speaker 1: that you were used a big part of that occurred. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was, And what is the special sauce that you bring?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I never stood still around looking at
Speaker 1: myself in the room full of mirrors. Okay, So how
Speaker 1: do you end up switching from Columbia Warner Brothers? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I kind of got I kinda got dry, tired of
Speaker 1: what felt like they were card They weren't. They weren't
Speaker 1: really putting their their energy into me, and wanted to
Speaker 1: take another shot, try somebody else out. And pretty much
Speaker 1: it was about to say the only thing I knew
Speaker 1: is that of that Sony or b M I. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what was it? April Black? With b M I, Sony?
Speaker 1: They all, you know, Chase Dolond made sure that if
Speaker 1: anything happened over there that they were in line for
Speaker 1: the publishing. You know, they're administrating part of the publishing.
Speaker 1: That's all they had. I had a dent of the
Speaker 1: writers and seventy five of the the publishing, and they
Speaker 1: took two administration. And how was the experience at Warners
Speaker 1: as opposed to Columbia was? Okay? So when it ends
Speaker 1: with Warners you lose your second major label deal. Did
Speaker 1: you say, no problem, I'll find my own way or
Speaker 1: were you disheartened? Yeah, that's it, man, I'm I'm a
Speaker 1: grown man. I'm if I look at these guys that
Speaker 1: you're a rapper, you're lucky if you get three records.
Speaker 1: You know, is that? You know I said, you know,
Speaker 1: I started making my own deals, you know, Colombia, Warner Brothers.
Speaker 1: The first deal that came along was was that I'm
Speaker 1: and direct right, you know. Next deal was the Usual Suspects,
Speaker 1: this guy named Tom. We did two or three albums,
Speaker 1: some tunes on that. You know, eighties come up, that's
Speaker 1: the eighties. Eighties come along. I always wanted to do
Speaker 1: some children's music, did children's music, you know, put ups
Speaker 1: of music out there, did music with the Bob Marley's
Speaker 1: mother Smiling Island a song, you know, different things deep
Speaker 1: in the big wide world. You know, the e walks
Speaker 1: for Star Wars. You know, um, you know, just you know,
Speaker 1: get busy, do stuff, you know, and Morning Brothers. I
Speaker 1: did a sound the second soundtrack. You know, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's like here you are talking to me. You didn't
Speaker 1: mention anything about the fact that I was. I did
Speaker 1: the first and at that time only acoustic soundtrack, Acoustic
Speaker 1: Country blues soundtrack to a major motion picture in the
Speaker 1: motion pictures sounder. I fully aware I was gonna get there,
Speaker 1: and I saw the movie when it's on its first release.
Speaker 1: So how did that come about? Um, someone who was
Speaker 1: doing the movie suggested that I'd be the guy to
Speaker 1: do it. They came around, Uh, I was, I was, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the came that's not think. At that point in time,
Speaker 1: I was being managed by Bill Graham Productions or Bill
Speaker 1: Graham Management Field Moore Management. And they came to the
Speaker 1: office and I was playing, and I flew down to
Speaker 1: the set in uh, Louisiana, Clinton, Louisiana, down outside of
Speaker 1: that rouge and what was it outside of Zachary, Louisiana
Speaker 1: So with the mis fifty miles old Mississippi border and yeah,
Speaker 1: they they asked me the you know. Uh. Martin Ritt
Speaker 1: was the director and he had listened to the album
Speaker 1: and he said he didn't think that I was the
Speaker 1: right guy. And I told him, I said, I told him,
Speaker 1: I said, did you did you have him listen to
Speaker 1: the second album? And he said, well, no, but he
Speaker 1: didn't think he were gonna be there. I said, listen
Speaker 1: the second album to have him listened to the second album.
Speaker 1: So when you listened to the second album, that's when
Speaker 1: he heard all the acoustic music, and I thought that
Speaker 1: that would be a better fit. You know. I knew
Speaker 1: it was going to be a better fit. But they
Speaker 1: had grabbed an album on their own, and they didn't
Speaker 1: think the first two were what they were looking for.
Speaker 1: And then the third one was even slicker, you know,
Speaker 1: And then that's what I knew, that was, here's a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of older tunes that you need to show
Speaker 1: up on this second album. And so to so many people,
Speaker 1: that is a bible of you know, what music is about,
Speaker 1: how to powlish it up. You know, it just sounds
Speaker 1: good as a you know, as music porch music from
Speaker 1: porch back, porch music, you know. But um yeah, um
Speaker 1: they Martin Rip liked it. And then then he asked
Speaker 1: me because I do some dialogue for him, and that's
Speaker 1: when they put me in the in the movie is playing,
Speaker 1: uh the family friend Ike Phillips, and I actually I
Speaker 1: actually got to you know, it was real nice. I
Speaker 1: actually got to have you know, one uh guitar like
Speaker 1: Rosetta Thorpe, one of those you know dually in National
Speaker 1: Sunbverse tobacco with sunbverse and and play that in the movie.
Speaker 1: And I will be there for as long as you
Speaker 1: can show that movie, you know. I mean it's that's
Speaker 1: like I pulled off, pull up, pull up a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of stuff. I want to walk up and one
Speaker 1: of the ending scenes, I'm whistling Carena when I walk up.
Speaker 1: You know, people paying attention. You know. I had a
Speaker 1: wonderful time with the people down there and the music,
Speaker 1: and I made some lifelong friends, the William Anderson family. Yeah,
Speaker 1: uh Ted Lee and them and uh yeah, okay, So
Speaker 1: then you end up working in front of the camera.
Speaker 1: How do you get all these other booby roles? Um No,
Speaker 1: I didn't do too much. I just did, you know
Speaker 1: a little bit. I did two pieces that were around sounder,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, I got a few things here
Speaker 1: and there. I want, you know, I want to there
Speaker 1: have been some really good stuff to play, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't want to do to be a job motherfucker
Speaker 1: up here and they're playing then see it. You know
Speaker 1: that's because that's what was going on. Then Yeah, man,
Speaker 1: I ain't to say if I ain't, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: not doing that. Yeah, come on, you know you mentioned
Speaker 1: Bill Graham, how important is a manager and will you managed? Well, um,
Speaker 1: that's a story that should appear somewhere else. I'll leave
Speaker 1: it at that, you know, I think that I'll put
Speaker 1: it this way. I died involved with him because I saw, oh,
Speaker 1: well he could do what he did. You know, we
Speaker 1: had some really differences, oh our modus operandi and yo
Speaker 1: personal service situation. At some point game till came to
Speaker 1: the fork in the road. Unfortunately we were able to
Speaker 1: to uh, he was able to two h figure that
Speaker 1: you know, I was, I was a man standing and
Speaker 1: he had to acknowledge that did about other people who
Speaker 1: were managing you good, bad or otherwise. You know. Yeah, well, well,
Speaker 1: see often times that people coming you can tell where
Speaker 1: people are at by how when when when it gets
Speaker 1: down to the crunch, you know, they they they're they're
Speaker 1: just the garden variety manager. You know, they don't see
Speaker 1: they don't see nobody's Most people are not going to
Speaker 1: see me because of the fact that they think that
Speaker 1: they know they know you know my people and how
Speaker 1: we react. Sometimes they might be absolutely correct. They know
Speaker 1: those people and how those people of my people react.
Speaker 1: They don't know me. You want to know me, talk
Speaker 1: to me. You want to know me. Respect me. I
Speaker 1: respect you. I started out but that, but you know,
Speaker 1: you play me cheap and play me payment, play me
Speaker 1: like I'm some kind of ghetto orf and you're in
Speaker 1: trouble son? Is that it ain't that kind of party?
Speaker 1: You know? And today? Do you have a manager today
Speaker 1: or do you do it yourself? Do you have an
Speaker 1: agent of books gigs? Yeah? I got what agent that
Speaker 1: books age and I worked with a with a management
Speaker 1: crew that I really like that I respect, you know,
Speaker 1: And that's it. You know, you even even if quietly
Speaker 1: you don't know as soon as you turn to your
Speaker 1: head sideways said, I don't know, you're in trouble. You
Speaker 1: know how to respect people. People have to respect you.
Speaker 1: Any goals that have going unfulfilled that you're still trying
Speaker 1: to achieve, Yeah, making money like Michael Jackson, okay, hopefully
Speaker 1: not spending it like Michael Jackson. But I said what
Speaker 1: I said, you know, Okay, So how has money been
Speaker 1: throughout your sixty year career? Uh? Scarce but good enough.
Speaker 1: Good enough to put my kids to college, you know,
Speaker 1: and you know, and take care of myself and take
Speaker 1: here the people that I'm responsible for into you know,
Speaker 1: if that's what it is cool, you know, I'm living
Speaker 1: a good life. You know, what are your kids up to? Um? Everything?
Speaker 1: You know, everything from landscape and you know, landscape, permaculture,
Speaker 1: other musicians, you know, computer computer, computer science people, um,
Speaker 1: you know, um yeah, everything you know your name it.
Speaker 1: You know. You know there's you know someone with musicians
Speaker 1: you know and involved in climate. You know. One of
Speaker 1: my daughters is a is a UM published writer, you know,
Speaker 1: and you know, all of them going along in their
Speaker 1: own space, doing their own thing, you know, and independent,
Speaker 1: so they're they're not on the payroll. Oh no, oh no,
Speaker 1: I mean when they were going to college. I mean maybe,
Speaker 1: like maybe my youngest one, he's he's just just just
Speaker 1: coming off, but he's still in he's still in school.
Speaker 1: You know, he's doing really good. He's gonna be I
Speaker 1: think springtime, that's gonna be the end of that. You know.
Speaker 1: He's the one he I mean, he's he's paying for
Speaker 1: a school and something he wanted to do. So I'm
Speaker 1: helping him out with other things, you know, and that works.
Speaker 1: You know. I got a couple of just a couple
Speaker 1: of them that I'm dealing with probably dealing with some
Speaker 1: money too. But you know when whenever it comes up,
Speaker 1: somebody's got a good idea, he says, Hey, they want
Speaker 1: to put this together. They needs they needs some backing,
Speaker 1: you know, sure, Steward, Okay, this is audio only, but
Speaker 1: I can see you. You have a fish or a
Speaker 1: dolphin around your neck. What's that about? That is a
Speaker 1: um marlin and it signifies almost seven hundred pound marlin.
Speaker 1: And I caught off of um Hannibal Bank in Panama
Speaker 1: and tagged it, revived it and let it go. And
Speaker 1: is there any weird place you haven't been that you
Speaker 1: want to go? Yeah? Sure, there's all kinds of places
Speaker 1: that come on man. I mean it's like you know,
Speaker 1: um yeah, it's like fifty four countries in Africa and
Speaker 1: I've only been a fourteen of them, you know, um
Speaker 1: plenty Caribbean islands I haven't been to, you know, been
Speaker 1: down there and been on some of them. You know.
Speaker 1: It's good, it's great, you know. And at this point
Speaker 1: in time, how many gigs do you do in a year? Uh? Well,
Speaker 1: it's just start enough since COVID, Uh, I don't know
Speaker 1: this year, I don't know how many we're we're probably well,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I have no idea yet, you know,
Speaker 1: just the last, the last of what we're doing for
Speaker 1: a year. That list seventeen more gigs and we're talking
Speaker 1: just before Thanksgiving. So going forward, do you want to
Speaker 1: work more? You want to work less? Anything? Specifically, you
Speaker 1: want to do work different? You know, means producing records,
Speaker 1: producing other people, seeing other folks get a platform, come
Speaker 1: up with you know, come out with some other I've
Speaker 1: got a lot of got a lot of ye know.
Speaker 1: It's like my output to two is much much bigger
Speaker 1: than what what the what their old record business used
Speaker 1: to be able to handle. So going forward, I think
Speaker 1: we can, we can put out more records, you know,
Speaker 1: but in a different kind of way, you know. I
Speaker 1: mean it's like now one one song equals the group
Speaker 1: you know where, which was like fifties. You know, it's
Speaker 1: Dion and the Belmonts. Oh my god, you know, it's
Speaker 1: Bill Dogging and Honkey Talk. Oh my god, it's James
Speaker 1: Brown and you know, try me, Smokey Robinson, you know,
Speaker 1: shop around, you know, and you didn't know anything else
Speaker 1: they did. Just do that. You like that record and
Speaker 1: you're like that band and we're back at the same door,
Speaker 1: you know. So, but I have a lot of music,
Speaker 1: you know, uh, other things I'd like to do. I
Speaker 1: love it, you know, do more uh scoring of records.
Speaker 1: Let me see the scoring with movies, you know, and
Speaker 1: uh you know. But also most of all, see the
Speaker 1: musicians that young, my my, my family. You'll get recognized
Speaker 1: who what it is they do is several you know,
Speaker 1: hip hop, rap, R and B, you know, far out jazz,
Speaker 1: you know, all kinds of music. Well, Taj, I want
Speaker 1: to thank you so much for taking the time to
Speaker 1: talk to me and my audience. I've been very illuminating. Hey,
Speaker 1: thank you. You know. I was saying, you know, you
Speaker 1: this stuff you're talking about, your growing up in your perspective,
Speaker 1: that people need to hear that stuff. Yeah. Well, hey,
Speaker 1: if you want it, you gotta go after it, you know.
Speaker 1: And you can't let people. You can't let people deter you. Nope,
Speaker 1: not deterred. Sorry, Well I know it's okay. You can
Speaker 1: go right ahead, you know, and I will read about
Speaker 1: you with you all your success when you drive your
Speaker 1: miles aroundie off Cliff because you can't stand not paid
Speaker 1: attention to you know, and keep on keep on percolating,
Speaker 1: doing right, doing good with people. But now some of that,
Speaker 1: no matter what, come back around and say, my god,
Speaker 1: just saying feels even better forty years later. I mean,
Speaker 1: I've got people telling me, man, I know you see
Speaker 1: fifty seven years ago, you know, just like this regularly ride. Well,
Speaker 1: fifty seven years we hadn't played together. Listen. I was
Speaker 1: talking about the psychiatrist earlier, and he says, oh, I
Speaker 1: saw taj Mahal when I was you know, and he
Speaker 1: said it was a high school. He sent me the thing.
Speaker 1: It was from Snick that was a benefit for stick
Speaker 1: and it was you and John Himmon and Tom Rush.
Speaker 1: People remember you, that's for sure. Yeah, right, even if
Speaker 1: they even even if they haven't come back for fifty years,
Speaker 1: if it was and then, and that was always something
Speaker 1: I have to say, that's something that always was able
Speaker 1: to sustain me. So I just realized that whatever it
Speaker 1: is and whatever what I'm supposed to get going here,
Speaker 1: is that I don't lose sight of the music. And
Speaker 1: I never did. I never have until next time. This
Speaker 1: is Bob Left sets h