I like his version better than mine. I also like the version of that song Mr. Clean that was done by Peter Herbolzheimer that was a big band and I like the version I rearranged for Bernard Wright, Mr.
I think it was an album he did for Manhattan Records, I can’t think of the title. Now, Sister Sanctified, I recorded it but I prefer Stanley Turrentine's version to mine. Young Gifted and Black has been recorded by so many people, Aretha Franklin, Nina Simone recorded it first, Dionne Warwick but my favorite would be Donny Hathaway's.
Those are some examples. What happened in the ‘80s? You didn't record at all.
In 1972 I put out my first album and it was independently released in terms of ideology and concept I was certainly doing what Prince has spoken about in terms of ownership of my masters and the belief that artists should take the initiatives in terms of doing it themselves. However, I had submitted demo after demo to record companies and was being rejected. I was the person who at that time, my greatest claim to fame was association with Nina Simone, who was political, and having written Young Gifted and Black, was not something that was making all the major labels beat down my door to give me a recording contract.
So I did three albums under my own label and then I did have a short stint with RCA, I did three albums for RCA. When I was dropped from RCA, no one would touch me with a 25 million foot pole. I think I was blacklisted.
Again, the things I was doing, not only in terms of what I was saying, but also taking the initiative in ownership, was things that the industry at large was not embracing. I take it you didn't get into disco much. When you think in terms of what happened after the ‘70s and in the ‘80s, when disco began to proliferate and you saw a waning of the social consciousness that you had had in the ‘60s, with Disco Fever, and Love to Love You Baby and Shake Shake Shake Your Booty, I wasn’t trying to hear that.
And I think not to be disparaging about disco artists as such, but in terms of content, I don’t think we’re going to be talking about the content of any disco artist in the year 2030. by the same token, there was a certain repetitive nature to disco that, as far as I’m concerned, was setting back musical progress. When I was dropped from RCA, being one circumstance, and then the music changing, it was hard not only to sustain a recording career, but many of my protégés were also dropped, and the music kind of fell into a cave.
I think hip hop at least reignited a spark and a zeal in the music industry and people like myself, Roy Ayers, who were quite active in the ‘70s, we all somewhat fell off the scene in the ‘80s, and some of us have come back into favor through acid jazz and or hip hop. Your reputation in the ‘70s was as an ensemble player….what do you see the similarities and differences between who you worked with in the past and the younger cats you’re working with now?
In the ‘70s, and I was and am an ensemble player, when I came to NY from VA, I wanted people like Coltrane, Freddie Hubbard, Elvin Jones, Tony Williams, Ron Carter, to be in my band. I wanted them in my band because they were the best players among the best players in NY, but I knew it was very unrealistic for me to think I could ever get those guys to play with me, a veritable unknown. But I moved to Jamaica, queens, and although I couldn’t get Elvin Jones or Tony Williams, I did get Billy Cobble.
Clint Houston and George Cables and I played saxophone for awhile. Later on I got Marcus Miller and Bernard Wright and Tom Brown. So what I discovered was, okay, if you can’t get Tony Williams and Elvin Jones, but you can get Lenny White, you’ve got Tony Williams and Elvin Jones, at least the embodiment of their styles in one drummer.
So all props to the cats in Jamaica, Queens, you all know who you are. I’m fortunate that all of those guys played in my bands over various periods of time. They comprised what we call the Weldon School, I being older than them was mentoring them as a leader and a teacher.
The main difference between those guys and the guys in hiphop that I’m teaching now is those guys were players from the jump. It wasn’t a question of me teaching them what a locrean mode was or what a scale was, but it was a question of me fine tuning which aspects of the music they found themselves deficient in. with these new guys, I’m giving them a grounding in music theory and basic technique and after they get that, then we’ll explore, spending a lot of time in the blues in particular, it’ll be up to them how deep in the swimming pool called jazz do they want to go.
But they’ll at least have the working tools to express their musical ideas as they see fit. My earliest musical influences were singers, as I said, I was a singer, I was a poet first, then I was a singer. When I had my tonsils and atenoids removed, it left me with this nasal speaking quality and I didn’t like the way I sounded.
But at the same time, the rock and roll piano players were coming out, Little Richard, Fats Domino, a guy named Huey (?), well, I was fooling around with the piano, but believe it or not, but the first money I made in music was as an arranger. Because I found out I have a gift for writing music, though I wasn’t trained to write music.
But the more I wrote, the more fascinated I became with the piano. So I began with doo wop piano, then rock n roll, r B piano and Ray Charles was a tremendous influence but Horace Silver, if I have to name one, perhaps was my most formidable influence in terms of those people who are known by your audience. There is a gentleman, now deceased, we called him Virginia Joe Jones, I actually featured him on my record In Harmony, but it’s a large list of pantheon of pianists who have inspired me.
Regarding, the Fender Rhodes, that is an electric piano, but the first electric piano I played was a Wurlitzer piano. Ray Charles played that on “What I Say”, Joe Zawinul played it on “Mercy Mercy Mercy”. The Fender Rhodes, I recall Herbie Hancock telling the story about seeing one in the studio, when Miles was doing “In a Silent Way”, that was about the time I saw it.
Because it was being used and I had played the Wurlitzer and Hammond B 3, it was in fashion and its sound is inimitable and i’ve used it quite extensively. I still use it. I have a passion for fender roads, clavalets, ray modulators and wah wah pedals, and phase shifters, just like Primo has, just like Ahmir has, just like your preeminent hip hop producers today like that ‘70s sound that I was a part of, I still like.
You played the Rhodes throughout your career and have been a big fan of its sound. What is it about that sound? Funky and soulful.
If I’m playing in a straight ahead context, I don’t want to see a fender roads nor a fender bass. I want a Steinway acoustic grand, I want you know, Tony Williams snare drum or a Elvin Jones. You know, music comes in different eras and the sound is reflective of those eras.
But in my view, I don’t discrim. Between the eras and i don’t pit one against the other. It’s an overworked phrase, but as they say, it’s all good.
It just depends whether or not you like it all or your view is narrow. My view is inclusive, not exclusive. Where do you see your sound moving now?
I hope that I’m evolving, it has been said about me that I’ve always been ahead of my time and there may be some truth to that. Because when I’m sampled some 15 or 20 years after the original composition, and I listen to the way my music is couched with in the confines of hip hop, but I must admit that it sounds fresh to my ears now. So the question deals with evolution.
I think I have a very sound grasp of the cultural lineage, particularly of the black musical experience, from African chants, to field songs, to gospels, to big bands, to swing, to be bop, to r b to hip hop to whatever the next flavor is going to be. So being grounded in the past and wanting to be innovative myself, I came by a style that we now call it the Weldon School. But this school extrapolates from things that came before and there are so many different influences, you know I’ve written over a thousand songs, so I think I evolved maybe around the time I was 19 or twenty.
Some of the best songs I’ve written I wrote in 1963 and I’m just now getting around to recording them. Anything else you want your audience to know? Definitely support all of the Amadou projects.
The Hip Hop for Respect project on Rawkus, Mr. Bruce Springsteen has caused controversy. I want folks to know I don’t have major label support and my record the Price of Freedom, you can get it, Tower, Border, HMV, and also there’s a website, www.
cdflip.com but I’m hopeful that some major record label if Amadou is going to become topical all of a sudden and you’re looking for something more than a single, there is only one entire 72 minute CD dedicated to police brutality and Amadou Diallo and I’m not the only person on it as I said, so I’m hoping that that one particular project can receive wider exposure. Property of Oliver Wang - Copyright 2000 - May not be republished without permission.
posted by O.W. I like his version better than mine.
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