James "JT" Taylor

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. We've been waiting, ladies,
jump and welcome to another episode, a special episode of
Quests Love Supreme. We've been waiting for this. We've been

(00:21):
waiting for this. You know what, Steve, I'm actually more
excited for the twelve year old version of you right now.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
Yes, I am super excited to talk to this man
and thank him. For everybody who's never had a bar
mitzvah before. This is going to be amazing.

Speaker 1 (00:42):
This this is my Christmas gift to you, man. This
this is my Shaka Khan gift to you. I got
you the king of all bar mitzvahs exactly.

Speaker 3 (00:52):
Never heard that title, but I'll accept that one. Oh
so talk about it.

Speaker 1 (00:57):
That's great, all right. I just treat this like a movie.
Even before I introduce what this show is, I just
have to ask our guests, who I've not introduced yet,
do you know the true story of how the song
Celebration got written? Has Ronald Bill will tell you the

(01:17):
story of how it inspired him.

Speaker 4 (01:19):
Not totally, but I have my own version of it
when I'm.

Speaker 3 (01:24):
Through the experience. Okay, so maybe I need to hear this.

Speaker 1 (01:28):
I'm under the impression based on Okay, so I used
to Oh, God, ladies and gentlemen, this quest. I love
a quest, Love Supreme. Of course, I'm here with Sugar,
Steven and our guest today. I don't even want to
waste long arduous introduction because you know my introduction is
will be nineteen minutes. I'm sitting here with the God,

(01:50):
the King of All bar Misvas, the God, the most
velvet voice, Yo, Supreme, Jesus Christ like mind, Nat King,
Cole the Voice James J. T. Taylor, formerly of Cool
in the Game.

Speaker 3 (02:08):
Thank you all right.

Speaker 1 (02:09):
So here's the deal. And I believe I might have
told this on on Robert's story as well, but at
the time when I invited Ronald Brother Beyon Colise Beyond.
Back when I was teaching at NYU with Harry Wider,
we once had brother Ronald Bell, saxophonist, primary songwriter of

(02:30):
Cool in a Gang, and he told us the story
of how he wrote Celebrations, so basically riding high off
the third wave of what the band is about the experience.
Of course, if you're fans of the band, you know
they came to it with a lot of jazz soul.

(02:51):
More on jazz, A lot of tribe called Quest Samples
came from that wave, and then in seventy four a
joke sort of mocking soul Makosa winds up being like
one of the most pivotal funk songs of the seventies.
So they had a seventies wave and then doing a
disco of course open Sesame on the Saturday Night Fever

(03:12):
soundtrack that was kind of their third wave. And now
they're about to start the hit making wave, and of course,
fresh off the success of their Ladies' Night single and
the subsequent album of that same name, they're on tour
and they happen to be in the Bay Area, and

(03:33):
I believe that they arrived in town the day before
on a Friday, to do some local record stores and signings,
because now you know, the heat is back on. The
Heat's back, yeah, And brother Ronald tells me that the
promoter who's bringing you guys to the particular venue, playhouse

(03:54):
in the Bay Area, has another show happening that night
and would he like to attend. Would you guys like
at ten? And that is when the Prince and Rick
James show come to this venue. And what winds up
happening is Prince goes on first, and at this moment,
Prince has the number one song in the country on

(04:16):
the Soul charts without Want to Be a Lover, right,
and Ronald says that he really wasn't all that familiar
with Prince, like he heard about him, but he really
didn't pay attention and he definitely wasn't familiar with the song. However,
he was highly impressed at how within two seconds everybody
just screamed and lost their minds. It wasn't just like,

(04:37):
you know, like everyone right, it could have been okay.
So he's more impressed with that. So that sort of
brings out the antennas in his brain is like, YO,
pay attention to the song for that. So he's just
pay attention to the song. And Prince finishes, is set

(04:59):
and it's like a twenty minut and it change over
for Rick James, and Ronald asked the promoter, YO, run
me backstays real quick to one of them dressing rooms
as a piano in it, and there was a spare
room and Ronald sits at the table and he starts
notating what he thought he just heard Prince do, which is,

(05:21):
I want to be a lover. He writes those chorus
down and he stares at this course and as most
songwriters do. Another way to get to sort of squeeze
juice from a used fruit is you figure out different

(05:43):
ways to flip a song, rewrite it again. People do
it all the.

Speaker 3 (05:46):
Time, like all the time.

Speaker 1 (05:48):
Fleetwood Mac famously on their Real It still says Spinner's
idea number two. Their favorite song was I'll Be Around,
and thus they made dreams on rumors I'll be around.
So anyway, he's looking at the notes and suddenly he's like, yo,
let me play this backwards now.

Speaker 3 (06:10):
N then.

Speaker 1 (06:14):
Backwards is then? So he notates, He notates the music
and he's like, all right, I got the idea. I'm
gonna go rock to watch Rick's James I believe when
you guys got finished the tour. It's like three weeks

(06:34):
later and he's gonna either demo or submit the ideas
to you guys. But he's like, wait, I gotta make
this complete song. Only got a groove. I want to
do a complete song. And at a bridge to it,
and he was running. He didn't have any nothing that
was coming to mind. He looks on the table on
top of the piano and there is a cash box

(06:58):
magazine and he opens up the charts. He goes right
to the pop charts and looks for the highest charting
Black song. So this particular issue, Rock with You by
Michael Jackson was number five. He knew Rock with You
well and when he wrote the bridge for it, due
It's Time to Come Together. It's the same chords as girl,

(07:24):
close your eyes, let this rhythm get into you. Every
one around, come on, come on that That to me
was one of the most genius stories I've ever heard
of a song being constructed.

Speaker 3 (07:40):
Well, he was. He was always like that.

Speaker 4 (07:41):
He was I called him to feel this leader, you know,
because he would do things like that, and sometimes we
would just hear it. We said, where did that come from?
And we just you know, to ourselves, and sometimes he would,
you know, regurgitate why he did it or why I came.
But my understanding was that when it was there, you know,
because when people bring all everybody would bring things in

(08:03):
all the time, ideas everything, you know, little lyrics here
are guitar player, a guitar part here, And it was
more of a celebration of the resurrection like Ladies' Night
came out big record, and nobody knew it was cool
in the gang because they heard.

Speaker 3 (08:18):
Me, you know.

Speaker 4 (08:19):
But we said, well, how we're going to follow that up?
So if you listen to Ladies Night, come on, let's
all celebrate. It was already preordained that we were going
to do celebration. Now, I don't know if that influenced him,
but I know when I knew it were going to
be celebration, I thought back, I said, you know that

(08:40):
spiritual thing starts hitting you and say like we were
like foreseeing this.

Speaker 3 (08:44):
Yeah, we said, come on, celebrate, So now let's sell
all celebrate.

Speaker 4 (08:47):
And then with the group going through that down period
from like seventy five I think to seven of eight
or something like that, Yes, thirty nine, there was a
drought and they told me the story that you know,
the record lay was going to drop them in all
that stuff, and I said, okay, well what we gonna do?
You know that came later, That question came later, but yeah,
so there was like a like I said, resurrection as well,

(09:11):
and we had gotten over that first Ladies to Night
album and that was big, and so how we're gonna
do it again? And people were actually doubting us. You know,
it was more like, you know, I want.

Speaker 3 (09:21):
The old old cool to gang.

Speaker 1 (09:23):
Yeah, I want I want to talk about it. I
want to I want to talk about that.

Speaker 3 (09:27):
Wait.

Speaker 1 (09:27):
Wait, I got to start to beget it. So I
just wanted to ask if you knew about that story.
But that was my that was my cold opening.

Speaker 4 (09:34):
That was that was the first I've heard of it
that in depth anyway. But I think again, it doesn't
surprise me.

Speaker 3 (09:40):
Because you know, he was like that man. He was
He was a.

Speaker 4 (09:44):
Special kind of guy from a many different angles, many
different angles, but you know, a sweetheart, and I would
say he was more he was a collector. He was
a jazz guy. But you know, anything was possible, you know,
if it was there. And I think when he even
heard when he heard me sing, you know, he was.

Speaker 5 (10:05):
Just like, uh, there goes that celebration.

Speaker 1 (10:09):
That okay, wait, ladies, we just we had a technical difficulty.

Speaker 3 (10:15):
We just rewinded.

Speaker 1 (10:18):
Yeah, but Steve had punch line in the century. He
was like, well, there goes this celebration.

Speaker 3 (10:24):
We got to write this stuff down. This is the song,
you know.

Speaker 2 (10:27):
Yeah, it was either that or la oh no oh no.

Speaker 1 (10:34):
All right, So wait, let me ask you, because we're
going to get to all these things, uh, but let
me ask you what was your very first musical memory.

Speaker 4 (10:43):
My first musical memory was I had to be like six,
because I remember we had just gotten my first television.
I was maybe five or six, and I remember being
in the kitchen and looking through to the living room
and my grandfather brought the television and it turned it on.

Speaker 3 (11:03):
There was a group there. I still don't I don't
know who they were, but I just knew that.

Speaker 4 (11:07):
They were dressed like like a five man group, and
they were just looking beautiful. And I did I didn't
even go to the television. I just stood back and
watched them. It just kind of messed me, rather.

Speaker 3 (11:17):
Like looking like, you know, the puppy, you know, with
the head, you know. And my sister.

Speaker 4 (11:23):
I have eight sisters, by the way, so oh no,
that's why I understand women.

Speaker 3 (11:29):
A house for of women, you know, so I know
how to move, you know.

Speaker 4 (11:33):
But she entered into a contest on the Cousin Bruce Show,
and this has taken it back and she actually won,
and she won that big smiley face thing or Cussy
Cousin Brucie, and she sang a song by wasn't Linda Jones,
but it was called I Know.

Speaker 3 (11:53):
I Know you don't love Me No More, No More.

Speaker 4 (11:58):
Something like that, And there was a up at solo
and I would like and it was this is all
radio wasn't on television and I was and that radio
was always on top of the refrigerator and I would.

Speaker 3 (12:08):
Stand there and mimic the trumpet solo.

Speaker 4 (12:13):
That was like my part, and that was like the
first thing that drew me into music right there.

Speaker 1 (12:20):
Wow, so you're one of nine?

Speaker 3 (12:23):
Yeah, well, yes, ten?

Speaker 1 (12:26):
Actually where do you fall in line?

Speaker 3 (12:29):
I say?

Speaker 4 (12:30):
I was always say that I was looked up to
and looked down on, right in the middle.

Speaker 3 (12:36):
Because my you know, my sister, you know, we we
had we.

Speaker 4 (12:39):
Had a lot of fund. You know, it's a house
full of women going on. And my brother he was younger,
and I had an older brother who was, you know,
my mother's child, but he'd be you know, we were
all one family, and when we got together, it was
a party.

Speaker 1 (12:54):
So are any of your other siblings as gifted? Is
this a musical family?

Speaker 3 (13:02):
I will say yeah, because everybody's staying in the church choir.
You know. It was almost like mandatory. You know.

Speaker 4 (13:08):
My mom could sing, and we were born in the
rural south South Carolina.

Speaker 3 (13:14):
What city in Lawrence, l a u are in US.

Speaker 4 (13:18):
And for my mother, I think she realized that I
have to get my children out of here to get
some type of opportunity.

Speaker 3 (13:25):
Going, you know. And this is just my thoughts. You know,
we really talked about that.

Speaker 4 (13:29):
But when we came to Jersey, we actually went to
Brooklyn first when we maybe both found our way over
to uh In to Hackensack and at the church there,
at the New Hope Church, my sister, you know, we
were all in the choir, as I said, but my
sister Frieda, she actually did a solo once, just her piano,

(13:49):
and I remember that being such a had a great
effect that someone could be standing there with just a
piano singing. And she didn't dress in the robe. She
actually had a red dress on and with legs showing
in the church, you know. But it was it was classy,
you know what I mean. And I remember sitting on
the side just watching it and just saying, just letting

(14:10):
it all come in, you know.

Speaker 3 (14:12):
And but everybody, you know, it's pretty much as far
as the professional side.

Speaker 4 (14:17):
They didn't go into that, but but that that church
part was something that was a big influence on all
of us.

Speaker 1 (14:24):
Where's your household's attitude to secular music at the time, Like,
were you allowed to listen to motown or music of
a day?

Speaker 3 (14:34):
Oh?

Speaker 4 (14:34):
Yeah, absolutely? My mother, you know, I think you know,
being listen. My father passed away.

Speaker 3 (14:40):
When I was nine. Okay, he was like only in
his forties.

Speaker 4 (14:44):
Okay, So here's my mother with all these kids, you know,
and her rules were lawt you know, you came home
from school, you did this, you did that, You got
up in the morning, you did this, you did that.
And her thing was to make sure that we were
rounded up, that she knew where we were and what
we were pretty much doing. So she had a transistor
radio on the refrigerator, again which no one could touch,

(15:09):
and usually it was either some gospel going on on there,
and sometimes she would flip to.

Speaker 3 (15:14):
Like some blues or something like that.

Speaker 4 (15:16):
But my uncle, who yeah, he used to come by
and he would drop off jazz albums. He would first
he would bring jazz albums for me to listen to,
and he would leave him there, and I mean he
went from you know, still Austin and then also sometimes
in the mix he would have like a Mom's Maybley album.

(15:37):
So as long as you know we were in the
house doing our thing, she was pretty much happy.

Speaker 3 (15:43):
So you know, it's like we're playing all the motown.

Speaker 4 (15:47):
She's in the live in the kitchen doing her thing,
and we were in hip party of dancing. And back
then it was the long rc RCA. You know, stereo,
you know, the best sound in the world, right, Okay,
you know you're putting the records on and then the
quarter and all that stuff. But as long as we
were like happy and we were around her, she knew

(16:07):
we were.

Speaker 3 (16:07):
We were having a good time. She let us stretch out.

Speaker 4 (16:10):
Man, it was and I and that that also helped
speed up my love for music and and and going
into different genres as well.

Speaker 1 (16:23):
I'll say that, uh, you're I'm not even gonna say
former employers. Your former group's story has been getting out
in the first three years, and they kind of taken
advantage of social media to tell these like two minute
Instagram animated vignettes of like what their life was like

(16:46):
as teenagers before they formed a band, and the kind
of war stories that Cool was talking about. And George,
you know that were you growing up in that part
of Jersey because like to hear cool tell it like,
I'm like, yo, I'm a shocked you still alive, Like
the amount of the gang stories he told me, and

(17:10):
you know every day fighting for like a quarterbread, Like
literally did you get a quarter to get a loaf
of bread to eat that day?

Speaker 4 (17:17):
Like?

Speaker 5 (17:17):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (17:19):
Was was that?

Speaker 4 (17:19):
Like?

Speaker 1 (17:19):
What was Jersey?

Speaker 3 (17:20):
Like?

Speaker 1 (17:21):
What were your memories of Jersey?

Speaker 4 (17:23):
My memories are faun I had fond members because we
didn't have that vibe.

Speaker 3 (17:27):
You know, we had our boys.

Speaker 4 (17:29):
With you know, park scraps, everybody you know, fighting and
stuff like that, but it was it was more like
very sparse.

Speaker 3 (17:36):
You know in our area. Everybody knew everybody.

Speaker 4 (17:40):
We didn't have a real racial problem, you know with
the white students that went to school with us. And
when we played we had it was within like about
two to four block area, so you knew everybody. And
when it was some fight, we never had like gangs
fighting to get territory and somebody stealing your money. If
somebody stole your money, you know there was a fight

(18:01):
going on, but it didn't happen too often.

Speaker 3 (18:03):
Because we had this place called Second Street, Park, And
that's what it was like.

Speaker 4 (18:10):
Our babysitter, our parents' babysitter. You know, they knew where
you were, and we weren't allowed to like just wander
off down downtown or go to this place. You know,
you had to ask and to go home to ask
to be somewhere. So again, we didn't have that type
of friction. No, not nothing close to Jersey City.

Speaker 1 (18:31):
Do you remember the first time that you saw a
concert or performance like who were your north Stars? As
far as like, wow, that's what I want to do.
You're a rare breed of a singer that came out
during the time you came out, because you were kind
of like even to me, you were like an older

(18:53):
brother figure. You weren't my pops like that Teddy Pendergrass. Yeah,
you know, like that to me sounded like my pops
and my uncles, whereas like you were kind of like
my cooler older brother, like too old for us to
like live in a bunk bed, you know, but like

(19:16):
I like that varsity jacket level. So the thing is
is that I know, you know, by the time the
Jackson five come out, you're like eighteen, So I don't
know if it's hitting you the same way that it's
hitting like my seven year old sister, Like where the
Jackson five was everyone's north star? So for you, Like yeah,

(19:38):
because you have a Johnny Mathews voice. I asked like,
were you more akin to like the styles of Frankie
Lyman and the teenagers?

Speaker 4 (19:46):
Like yeah, that's good that you brought that up. Well,
the thing is with my I remember, you know, like
I said, seeing in the church choir and everything, but
always had a band also, and I would like wherever
there was music happened in town, I found myself there,
whether it was older guys or you know, guys my age.

Speaker 3 (20:06):
And when I had my.

Speaker 4 (20:08):
First group of three and we were like we call
the Electoral five, you know, like the Jackson five, you
know before that, you know, when they were really like young,
you know, he had apple jack hats and the nice
shiny suits and everything, and we were called it Electro five,
you know, And so that that spread everything up. But

(20:29):
there was a band in town called the Phialaa Soul
and like the best of soul.

Speaker 3 (20:34):
And I know it sounds a little fishy, but you
know I got to see.

Speaker 4 (20:40):
I had to get back and see at least throw
one at him, you know. But but these guys were
so good. I'm telling you. They played sly It's close
as things to Sly as sly himself. And we used
to actually follow them around. And the thing that was
odd was that the Catholic Church is the diaces, would

(21:02):
allow us to have parties and they would have this
like little drop off. So they would go to Lodie,
to Hackensack, over to this town and they had a following,
and I used to follow them, and years later I
end up being the lead singer of that same group.
So Slyde became the one that I loved the most,

(21:23):
and not just because it was him, but it's the
eclectic part of their band, having clarinets, trumpets, women, you know,
a drummer, you know, all these different parts at a
B three organ.

Speaker 3 (21:38):
So that was everything I pretty much grew up with.

Speaker 4 (21:41):
And he was like, and still is to this day,
like my guy, you know, wow, Okay, yeah.

Speaker 1 (21:48):
That's what's up. What was the first album you ever purchased?

Speaker 3 (21:53):
And I knew you're gonna dig with that one. That's
a see.

Speaker 4 (21:56):
The album were in the house that that never bought
because we didn't have money, so it was things usually
like a Surely Seizar album or something like that. But
I never bought gospel albums my mother. That was like
kind of her role. But if I think back to it,
it had to be something with motown or James Brown.

(22:18):
Probably a James Brown record.

Speaker 5 (22:20):
Okay, okay, where are you living now? Just out of
curiosity in North Jersey? Okay?

Speaker 3 (22:28):
Yeah, still home?

Speaker 1 (22:31):
Besides church? Were there any other functions that you were
singing at high schools?

Speaker 4 (22:35):
Or I would singing anywhere any style in the park
at it for nothing. You know, you wouldn't getting paid, But.

Speaker 3 (22:46):
I never I don't have to see.

Speaker 4 (22:48):
I didn't say to myself this is what I wanted
to do. I was in the midst of it from
the moment I heard music. If you if you understand
what I'm it's like I didn't have a time with Okay,
this is what I'm going to do for life. It
was just a part of me, you know. And it's
like a lot of things are like that for me.

(23:09):
You know, I don't have to really put on airs
to be something or to accept someone doing something. And
like it's like when I see you and your band,
it's like that's supposed to happen, and whatever you're doing,
I'm just gonna immerse myself in it and not be

(23:30):
so judgmental, even if I don't, you know, particularly like everything.
It's just I think that the life of music is
like my life blood. And that's why I don't have
a specific moment. But when when you say Jesus moment,
it's like, I remember, like my mother used to we
got too old to get that whip, and you know,

(23:53):
she would like make us sit on the steps or
something like that. And one day, you know, I don't
know what I did, but she she sat me on
the back steps in our back porch, and I was
just sitting there and I was always like a very
like outside the Bible thing, you know, like things didn't
make sense to me.

Speaker 3 (24:13):
Is why does this happened?

Speaker 1 (24:14):
I'm like, you know, but I meant that metaphorically.

Speaker 3 (24:18):
I didn't mean, man, yeah, I know what you meant,
but I'm trying to get to something.

Speaker 4 (24:22):
So one day I'm sitting there and I actually felt
like I saw the tree growing. And this is when
I was very very young, so I've always had that feeling.
So there wasn't a moment of that Jesus moment of music.
I'm going to do this in my life. It was
just a part of the maturation, was all of it.

(24:43):
So when it did happen, got it. I was already
in the midst of it, and it never overwhelmed me
at that time.

Speaker 3 (24:51):
If you understand what I mean, Yeah, yeah, I got it.

Speaker 1 (24:55):
So I'll ask you what was your knowledge of the
moment they became cool in the Gang? I know they
were various other groups, but were you wear them from
their first self titled record those Oh yeah, first, So
what was your opinion of Like what did you think?

(25:15):
Were they just like, oh they from Jersey or no?

Speaker 3 (25:18):
No.

Speaker 4 (25:20):
I thought they were awesome because we used to, you know,
carry the boomboxes. Have Ben and a friend of mine, Curtis,
he would always have his boombox and we would listening
to Cooling the Gang stuff walking to school. And sometime
I go to his house and I remember, I forget
what Albert was. I think was the ice block cool
in the Gang? It was like a block the message
yet the message yet Yeah, And so I got into

(25:41):
what they were talking about because we were growing up
in the civil rights so those things they were talking
about in a musical way.

Speaker 3 (25:49):
So that's pretty clever how they got the message across.

Speaker 4 (25:53):
You know, we're not even as blatant as like a
girl Scott did, you know. But it was something that
I could late to musically as well as instrumentally, and
something you could dance to at the same time.

Speaker 3 (26:06):
So that was always a magnet.

Speaker 4 (26:08):
And if you look at all the groups back then,
from James Brown, you know, I'm black and I'm proud
anything that anybody was doing Marvin, it was the social
consciousness while we were growing up that implemented music that
showed instrumentation and all these great guys playing this stuff.
And then, like I said, with my uncle dropping jazz

(26:29):
music off, I realized that they were telling the same
story growing up. So it was reaching and pulling me
in all of these different directions. But I thought that
Coolning were great, and ironically when I mentioned the Flair
of Soul, we actually opened up for them once at
Newark College I think it's Caine College in Newark, and

(26:52):
I tried to get backstage to meet them. This is
years before I even I became a member, and some
security guy wouldn't let me come.

Speaker 3 (27:00):
Back to meet him.

Speaker 4 (27:00):
But I wanted to talk to them about, you know,
what they were doing, because I liked it very much,
you know, Oh.

Speaker 5 (27:06):
Okay, that's such a cool story.

Speaker 4 (27:09):
Yeah, it's all one man, all it all.

Speaker 3 (27:12):
It's all related in some way. You know.

Speaker 2 (27:15):
That's really interesting that you were a fan and tried
to meet that ends up in the band, right.

Speaker 3 (27:19):
Yeah, and end up. It's crazy.

Speaker 1 (27:22):
How did you specifically get their attention? What's the story
process that leads to you, guys meeting to audition for
the band?

Speaker 4 (27:32):
There was a there was a part on a house
of music and studios and the West Orange and I
did a session with Jeff Dixon.

Speaker 3 (27:43):
Wait what Jeff Dixon?

Speaker 5 (27:45):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (27:46):
Really?

Speaker 3 (27:47):
And I went I got.

Speaker 4 (27:48):
A call that step and said, listen, man, this is
this guy doing a he's doing trying to put this
group together. And his name was Jeff Dixon. He wants
you to come down. I told him about you. And
but in the stadion and I did a There was
a section of the song that I did and when
I finished my part, I went out and when it
was done, he said, come back in, and he said,

(28:11):
he said, listen to what happens to the song when
your part comes, and he played it through and he said, you.

Speaker 3 (28:17):
Hear that, that's it right there.

Speaker 4 (28:19):
He said, I got to get you with somebody, you know,
And I was like, I was just doing what he
instructed me to do. So when I got the call
to come to audition, I don't know if it was Stephen,
whether it was Jeff Dixon.

Speaker 3 (28:34):
That that told cool him about.

Speaker 4 (28:36):
Me, but I know when when I got there, Irene
Conrad I mentioned, he said, yeah, well cooling them there
down here, and I went in and I met Chalice
and the thing for me, I really wanted to meet
DT and Spike for some reason, I don't know, because
these team was always like the cooler dress guy and

(28:57):
he had he played a great horn and Spike the trumpet,
and I just like he had this this jazzy thing
about him that was cool when he had a wittles
Peak kind of cut there. He was just like a
attractive kind of aura that they had.

Speaker 3 (29:14):
You know, you really knew these cats, Yeah, I knew
them from just the music.

Speaker 1 (29:19):
In my mind. I was like, especially now, I mean,
you know, I'm gen X and there's some gen Z's
and Jen alphas after these alphas that pretty much like
started with millennials, but also with gen Z and with
Jens Alpha where it's just like a kind of blatant

(29:39):
uh purposeful indifference, or it's where like I wouldn't think.
I thought, oh, he's probably a new guy in a
group and don't even know who Mickens is or who right, like, oh,
some old guys want me to sing in their group
and that.

Speaker 4 (29:58):
No, I never thought that, if you know question back then,
like the albums they had the liner notes, they told
you who.

Speaker 3 (30:05):
Guys were, so you would sit there.

Speaker 4 (30:07):
You didn't have a cell phone or anything, so you
would go through the album and you're listening to it
and you were finding out, oh this guy played that.

Speaker 3 (30:13):
Oh I didn't know.

Speaker 4 (30:14):
And I didn't even know Dtu played played the flute okay,
And then I thought, oh, I.

Speaker 3 (30:19):
Said that was him playing that, Oh okay. So when
I met him, I was like, yo, man, at that
part you played on this, you know, stuff like that.

Speaker 4 (30:26):
So I was telling them little things that I appreciated
and and you know, funky George and listening to that
foot man, I said, wow, that's you know.

Speaker 3 (30:36):
So it was I was like in heaven and so
to speak, you know.

Speaker 1 (30:40):
All that I said about your your velvet voice, and
and you being a modern nat king Cole. I asked
them in my class, like what was that process like
of finally striking gold, because you know, he told a
story about everybody's disco dancing album like Flopped, And they
were in the store and doing an autograph session and

(31:01):
nobody was there, and one girl was like who they
supposed to be? Oh cool and gang ill like. She
was like, ah, man, we gotta get a singer. We
gotta get a singer. It's like desperation. But he says
that he knew within the first three seconds you were
the singer because you sounded like nacking Cole, And I thought,
like that might have struck me odd because I would

(31:23):
I would almost think like, okay, during that time period
seventy nine, you gotta compete with all these gruff, all
these I mean, either they're kind of over the top.
I'm not saying primitive exotic, but you know, unless you
come super animated, ah you like super Foot is animated,

(31:44):
Boots and Parliament they're animated, or you're coming like you know,
I mean the Mendingo, yeah, like or spiritual. You came
very classy, but you came see in a way that
wasn't like like, I don't know if Johnny Mathis would

(32:04):
be like just walking down the hood, you know.

Speaker 3 (32:08):
What I mean.

Speaker 1 (32:09):
But you almost had like a you had some street
confidence about you. But you also came off like you
might have done two years in ROTC Strain in or
in college.

Speaker 3 (32:25):
I actually did.

Speaker 1 (32:27):
As much as I love the Jackson's and they were
my heroes. I'd never looked at them once and thought
like you might be some college educated brothers. You know,
the commodoret talk all the time about going into Ski Institute,
but you know, but but they still wow. So for me,
you were like the first look into what we might

(32:51):
perceive day Lot.

Speaker 3 (32:52):
Sould to be or like yeah yeah.

Speaker 1 (32:55):
So for you, though, what was the audition process?

Speaker 3 (32:59):
Like?

Speaker 4 (33:00):
I didn't go in there like super nervous. And I
think again, as I said to you, the process was
the whole the whole thing included, meaning the music process
from being young all the way through. So this feeling
that I've had, the spiritual feeling i've had, was like, Okay,
I'm here, so this is what we're going to do.
And he said, let me hear you sing something. I said, well,

(33:24):
what do you want me to sing? He said, anything,
just make something up and he started playing these changes
and I sang, you know, in my baritone voice, you know,
and he said can you sing hi? And I said yeah,
and I did some falsettled stuff, you know, and that's
pretty much all I remember doing for him.

Speaker 1 (33:47):
Did you know what you were walking into?

Speaker 3 (33:51):
No?

Speaker 1 (33:52):
So no one officially said cool in the gangs looking
for a lead singer said.

Speaker 4 (33:56):
The only thing I knew was that they were looking
for some back round for me to sing background on
the record. Okay, and again you know that's what I do,
so okay is this where's the songs that you know?

Speaker 3 (34:10):
And my thing, I'm like that, what's the song? What
are we going to do?

Speaker 4 (34:12):
And thinking it's going to be more in the vain
of what they did before, you know, background, you know,
Hollywood's well, you know, jungle boogie, all that.

Speaker 3 (34:20):
Stuff, you know.

Speaker 4 (34:21):
And when I met with I think it was Gabe
Figarto the Light Records, he said, you know, Jay, that
era has passed. And when I met Diodado, I was
I don't think I was in the meeting, but he
asked Gabe, he said, he said, well, who's who's going
to sing this? And he said him this JT and

(34:45):
he said, I want you to put the music around
him his voice, and I'm said okay, okay, And you know,
so I'm green at this time. You gotta understand, as
far as studio work, I've never worked in the studio
in any capacity, Like what's going to come?

Speaker 2 (35:05):
Was Diodado part of your audition? Like was he one
of the people.

Speaker 3 (35:09):
Who was No, No, he wasn't in there at all.
I met him a little later, but.

Speaker 2 (35:14):
He was already involved with them at that point.

Speaker 3 (35:17):
At that point, I was so everything was great, you know.

Speaker 4 (35:21):
I was like I knew I was school a gang,
I'm in the studio, a house of music.

Speaker 3 (35:27):
They liked me, and when.

Speaker 4 (35:29):
We started working, we instantly I wouldn't say instantly, but
we started working on music and we would go to
I think on thirtieth West thirties Street at Daily Planet,
just playing songs there.

Speaker 3 (35:43):
You know. So when dian Donald got involved, this.

Speaker 4 (35:48):
Whole thing was trying to mesh what they brought in,
what everybody was writing. And at the time I wasn't
bringing anything in as far as like songwriting anything like that.
I was more like just feeding off of what's coming
at me. That me, let me be here, let me
listen to this guy, let me be over here, and
and it was all interesting, nothing was boring.

Speaker 3 (36:10):
But the thing that was that was funny though.

Speaker 4 (36:12):
Was that they had three girls, three women I would say,
singing background, and a couple of other.

Speaker 3 (36:20):
Yeah, something sweet and got.

Speaker 4 (36:22):
There was a couple other guys in there, and I
remember them looking at me sideways, you know, and I'm
up here saying, okay, I have to get my street
vibe on, you know, because what's going on? Like what
are these people looking at me like this for?

Speaker 3 (36:35):
So I'm thinking, do I have to make a.

Speaker 4 (36:37):
Phone call, you know, get some of my guys that
come because this is all me thinking this is not them,
and because I'm saying, why these daggers being thrown at
me when I'm here to help. You know, I didn't
ask to be here. I was encouraged and asked invited
to be here. And I thought that they were good,
and I said, well, we just keep them to myself.

(36:57):
This is all internal, you know, how music is going
on and people are walking around and I don't know
any of these people.

Speaker 3 (37:05):
I don't even know cooling.

Speaker 4 (37:06):
Them really, so I'm trying to vibe and make sure
I'm safe at the same time.

Speaker 3 (37:11):
And you know, I.

Speaker 4 (37:12):
Wasn't a person who hung out in the city, so
that whole thing, you know, was new too, So you know,
there's a lot coming at me.

Speaker 1 (37:24):
What were you doing to survive before you joined the
band and how long was it until you felt secure
enough that you were making your living as a member
of Cooling the Game.

Speaker 4 (37:42):
I went to HBCU as well in Norfolk State, Virginia.
I did two years there and it just wasn't my
time to be in college.

Speaker 3 (37:51):
You know.

Speaker 4 (37:51):
I was all about music and I didn't study music
there and I just had a difficult time, so I
dropped out because music was my passion, you know. But
when I came home, you know, I was pretty much
bumming around. I was playing a lot of different bands
and working odd jobs, got me an apartment and had

(38:12):
a raggedy car, that type of thing, and you know,
all of this happened, and then I get.

Speaker 3 (38:18):
The phone call from Cooling Them.

Speaker 4 (38:20):
But I think at seventy nine when we did the
Ladies and Night album and we started going to Paradise
Garage and all your different places for promotions and clubs
and garage yes, yes.

Speaker 3 (38:34):
We did it. What was that?

Speaker 4 (38:36):
I knew that was going to raise the eyebrows, but
we we actually had the record company did a promotion
there because you know, it was the greatest sound system
in the in the city.

Speaker 3 (38:47):
Right, you know, with the with those the speakers, the.

Speaker 4 (38:50):
Speakers right cranked up, you wouldn't even be able to
hear when you left there.

Speaker 3 (38:54):
But we did a thing when they dropped Ladies'.

Speaker 4 (38:57):
Night at Paradise Garage, you know, which was a appropriate
and I remember we went up and the DJ called us,
say cool in the gang the record you know, and
uh he.

Speaker 3 (39:06):
Said, cool ist here, JT's.

Speaker 4 (39:08):
Here and yeah you know that, you know, and they
dropped it.

Speaker 1 (39:13):
Dude, I aspired to be his level of DJing like.

Speaker 4 (39:16):
That he was here, awesome man, and he dropped it
and they hit the floor and everybody just looked at
each other was just like okay.

Speaker 3 (39:26):
And the record company I think that they knew that
that they had it right there.

Speaker 4 (39:31):
Because again, nobody expected it to sound like that. You know,
they looked they were looking for all these horns and everything,
and they were.

Speaker 3 (39:40):
Like, well, who's who's the who's the voice? Where that
voice comes from?

Speaker 4 (39:45):
And you know, some people were like, nah, man, that
can't be cooler then, you know, and some time I
got I got a little flak back to that, because well,
I want I want to hear the old stuff, the
winds down, and they were telling me said, listen, man,
we weren't eating on that up anymore, right, So yeah,
it was It was awesome.

Speaker 3 (40:05):
Did I answer the question?

Speaker 1 (40:07):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (40:07):
Yeah, because that that ladies night out, That's when I
realized I could I start making a living and you know,
bost some new clothes.

Speaker 1 (40:16):
I figured as well, this is probably one of the
rarest chances I get to ask this question, So I'm
gonna try to ask very careful. Okay, Okay, So what
could a working class musician make in nineteen seventy nine?
I mean, I'm basically asking what is a living in

(40:37):
seventy nine? And I'm only asking this because, okay, like
hip hop has distorted the expectations of what one should
expect from this industry because you know, it's such a
hustling culture and you see everyone just like their money away.
And the thing is is that my manager kind of

(40:58):
told us from the G eight, look, I'm not doing this.
You guys aren't going to ball out of control, like
you're going to be able to slide your mom some
very significant petty cash monthly. You'll be able to have
a half decent crib. And if I do my job right,

(41:21):
you know, you guys will at least be able to
make at least what a surgeon would make. At the time,
I did agree with that, and I'll subscribe to it.
Now I'm in a mind state where I want to
be a daredevil and dream my highest dream like, but
back then I was really small minded with it. But

(41:41):
that said, you know, I think that's what at least
for the twenty years of doing the Roots, you know
before the Tonight show, that that enabled me to not
have distorted expectations and stay focused, you know, like a
lot of people after the third or fourth time, like

(42:03):
it took us four albums to really get to a
satisfactory place. But I think a lot of people would
start to give up or start sabotaging their cells for
And I'm asking this because there really wasn't the standard
of hip hop baller lifestyles expected for not at all
black singers. So what could you expect to make a

(42:28):
living on as elite singer of been established ben with
albeit with a new lease on life that they didn't
have before, like NB eighties.

Speaker 4 (42:38):
Our situation, we didn't have that type of manager that
you had. We were not given any direction as far
as what you're going to make per se. My expectations
were simple, Matt, you know how many records did we sell?

Speaker 3 (42:55):
Okay?

Speaker 4 (42:56):
We got six of us record label gets. Okay, so
where's that was left over? And that wasn't happening now.
I couldn't rock the boat at that point because I
didn't really have the cachet, the the input, the in

(43:22):
seniority to do that. So they were rationing out weekly income.

Speaker 1 (43:28):
So you were getting paid like a rookie.

Speaker 4 (43:30):
Like a rookie, right, but enough to live better than
I was living just about a little bit more above that.
And we were we were actually working so much that
it should have been maybe five to ten times more
than that, you know, because we were killing it. We were,
and we were like working every day like like seem

(43:53):
like we've never never stopped. So the money really wasn't
adding up with the hits and how much we were touring.
And my family started asking that question. I go, okay,
well get your apartment. You got a decent car now,
and I could when I wanted to slide my mother
that money you were talking about, I didn't have as

(44:15):
much as I thought to do that, because at the time,
you don't really need a whole lot, you know, you
just kind of still in the midst of the musical part,
you know, and you just expect the money to be there.
You got around people around you. I'm with cooling them.
They've been around here since the sixties. You know, all
this is going to come around.

Speaker 3 (44:37):
And it was fine, you know.

Speaker 4 (44:38):
When I started asking questions, that's when I started finding out, you.

Speaker 3 (44:44):
Know, all of the the side.

Speaker 4 (44:46):
Deals, all the things that were not there, and you know,
you just kind of find your way through speak when
you can't speak. And some of the people that we
were working with, you know, I was told, you know, well,
you can't talk to these people like that. I said, well,
if I'm being a man, no one's gonna stop me

(45:07):
from talking and speaking up for myself. I'm not trying
to be a bad guy and sweet guy nothing. I'm
just gonna say that this fit ain't right, you know,
and this should be a little bit more balanced right here,
you know.

Speaker 3 (45:19):
So that was always my position.

Speaker 1 (45:22):
Were the people that were running Delight Records, the same
people by the time you got in the seventy nine position.
You're tenure in nineteen seventy nine. Because Ronald told me
that he was very careful with his words, but he's
basically insinuating to me that the whole Jungle Boogee story

(45:46):
was kind of at the insistence of some friends of ours.

Speaker 3 (45:51):
I would say that, yes, I heard that.

Speaker 1 (45:53):
Aah, that kind of hitman level.

Speaker 3 (45:56):
Okay, well, the same same people. Wow, I see, and
you understand I was saying.

Speaker 1 (46:05):
I totally understand what you're saying.

Speaker 2 (46:08):
I'm so glad for once it's not my people who
are just screwing up.

Speaker 3 (46:13):
It was you. It was you.

Speaker 1 (46:16):
Have you read Mars Leavey's hit Man?

Speaker 3 (46:18):
No not yet, No, No, I haven't.

Speaker 1 (46:20):
Now that's that's the book that exposes the you know,
that's what built Jerry's, the whole game, Jersey, Sylvie Robbinson,
all them people.

Speaker 2 (46:30):
So I'm sorry, let me let me interject here. So
what about the publishing side of things though? Was that
also sort of shady because you were you were writing
some of these big hits.

Speaker 4 (46:40):
Yeah, because when I came into the group and I again,
when I started peeping some of the stuff, it was
more like they had told me they had a deal
that was already set when I came in, So I
kind of had to buy into what was already established.
Right I was within a separate entity. I was now

(47:03):
a part of the of the entity. And with that
that means that I was I had to adopt some
of the things that they had already had in order,
and that really wasn't anything I could do about it.

Speaker 1 (47:16):
I do have a question about the repertoire when you
first get in the group. You know, as I said
at the top of the show, there's like almost five
to six levels of the band's history that one could
gravitate towards. If you're into a lot of early wrap samples,
then you know, the first three years are you bag
for kind of like the first real true steps into

(47:40):
funk territory, not soul funk. There's there's an era of
like you know, seventy four is seventy nine, and then
there's the disco period seventy seven whatever, and then here
comes the hits seventy nine and so on. When you
guys are putting your shows together, is there me attention

(48:01):
being paid to for the kind of pre wild and
peaceful catalog songs or songs like NT or ron Hamburger
or like a lot of these, or are they still
a part of the show, like the instrumental part of

(48:21):
the group.

Speaker 3 (48:23):
Not really, that was once you came in.

Speaker 4 (48:25):
Then it was just yeah, well sing not totally, but
but you know, Ronald, everybody was like, listen, man, they
want to hear the new songs.

Speaker 3 (48:33):
And I said, yeah, but we got the we have
the best of both worlds here, guys. And I used
to preach.

Speaker 4 (48:39):
I said, man, we have to play open sesame tonight,
and it depends on where we were playing.

Speaker 1 (48:43):
Wait a minute, they wouldn't do that.

Speaker 3 (48:45):
No, we didn't that a hit.

Speaker 1 (48:47):
I'm talking about like obscure and stuff.

Speaker 3 (48:50):
Yeah, once in a while.

Speaker 4 (48:52):
And I said that we would because you know, we
always had great segues into songs.

Speaker 3 (48:56):
You know, I picked up a lot of that from
from working with with police, and I.

Speaker 4 (49:01):
Said, we can just sneak that in right here. We
could sneak in tea right here, or you know, Googoo boxer,
something like that. Anyway, nasty, nasty, little funky track man.
And then of course opened sexity and some of the madness.
I'm sorry, yes, some of the madness. They didn't have
a problem with that. And Hollywood swinging. We would play that,

(49:24):
but as far as involving all the other stuff that
I was grew up on walking to school with, over
time it just was moved out. And each album that
we did, because we had like a almost a decade
run of just top ten or top five hits, that
those are the songs that they said people wanted to play,

(49:44):
and the audience became more global, and the global audience
didn't know all of those songs that we that you
and I like, you know, the nts and all that
they knew, celebration and all this.

Speaker 3 (49:57):
And I remember when we did Joanna. You know this,
this is one of the most hurtful things that ever
happened to me. And no, no, I was good, but.

Speaker 1 (50:13):
The way they're done.

Speaker 4 (50:17):
And we were doing Joanna, and we we had this
black station and you know, we rolling everything and the
an R guy was trying to get the record played.
I don't think it was down with butter down there
in Philly. Uh, it was something like a big station
like that. But anyway, they said that it wasn't black

(50:38):
enough quest. I'm telling you, I remember going back to
my room and walking, just pacing in my room, back
and forth. I don't know how long I did it,
and almost like water coming out of my eyes right,
And I'm saying, I'm thinking about Frankie Lineman and all
these guys that paved the way to do all these things,

(50:59):
from from you know, jazz to Leontine Price and all
the I'm thinking about all of them that were you know,
couldn't even dress in the dressing room, had to come
in the back door.

Speaker 3 (51:11):
That all this is in my head.

Speaker 4 (51:12):
We were going through civil rights and you know, we're
trying to find our way through. And I'm doing this song,
this melodic song that is a part of me. And
if it's part of me and me and the group,
then it's a part of black America, you know. So
how could somebody black tell me that it's not black enough?
I said, what is black enough mean? So that was

(51:33):
the first time I was hit with that. And I
remember calling my mother and I said, Mom, I said,
I said, they said I wasn't my singing ain't black enough?
You know?

Speaker 3 (51:45):
And she said something, she told me, she eased my mind.
She said, that's a good thing. That means that you're different.

Speaker 4 (51:53):
They try to tell you that you're supposed to sound
like something they want you to sound like, but you
don't sound like that, so that makes you unique.

Speaker 3 (52:03):
How you feeling?

Speaker 4 (52:06):
And it sobered me up because it reminded me that
you've grown into this rainbow of styles from from the
little transistor radio to the Philea Soul and then hearing
all my heroes like the Motown and the Philly International
Sounds and all this and Stacks Records and all these

(52:29):
different great people and you're amongst those people now. So
you don't have to try to be anybody but who
you are, and that is a black man who can
do rock, funk, jazz, love, the love the classics, Leontine Price,
love Stravinski.

Speaker 3 (52:49):
You know what I mean, You can, It doesn't matter.
It's not a colored thing with music. So she cooled
my little ass down real quick and said, you know
know who you are are, your tailor, and people have
already given you the christen you. You know that that
they accept what you are.

Speaker 4 (53:08):
So don't you start thinking that you have to be
somebody else just because the radio station said this song
ain't black enough. Maybe not for what they want to play,
but globally the world has already said we love this.

Speaker 1 (53:23):
You also got the last laugh, bro.

Speaker 3 (53:25):
I mean, yeah, yeah, it was, it was, it was.
It was a traumatic time, bro, you know what I mean.

Speaker 1 (53:36):
This is the dumbest question I'm ever going to ask
in my professional career, but this is the only chance
I get to ask it. When you shot that schlitch
maat liquor bull commercial, come on, come on, there was
never a real bull on the premises, right hell no, okay,

(53:57):
I would.

Speaker 3 (53:58):
Have been gone before he broke through that. That was
a pretty good pre uh editing right pre.

Speaker 1 (54:07):
Ai to this day when I go down a rabbit
hole on YouTube, I literally watched all forty five minutes
of every slitch won't like a Bull commercial, Very great running,
and I always wanted to know they used.

Speaker 3 (54:25):
To edit it.

Speaker 4 (54:26):
I mean, I hope I'll didn't ruin it for everybody,
but but yeah, we suggest you know, just looking running.

Speaker 1 (54:32):
Yeah I got, but that was that was.

Speaker 3 (54:34):
That was a hot commercial for a long time. It was.

Speaker 1 (54:37):
It was man like, Yeah, it was a big deal
because you never saw like your favorites on that level.
My dad especially liked it because sometimes they would juxtapose,
like you know, I think you guys did a version
and there was the platters as well.

Speaker 3 (54:52):
That we did went with the four tops or the
four tops.

Speaker 1 (54:54):
Yeah, like yeah, my dad, my dad comes from you know,
the fifties Erasode and it was like important to see
the group seems like represented absolutely.

Speaker 5 (55:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (55:05):
So when I first got my record deal, like I
would say that my first splurge, Like, okay, I made it.
It's not much. There was too much of a build up,
but you know for me, sneakers and my record collection,
that was it. Yeah, it was all I wanted to

(55:26):
do in like for you, what was your first like extravagant,
I want cheese on my whopper like.

Speaker 3 (55:36):
That type of thing.

Speaker 4 (55:37):
Let me see, I think I got my first Mercedes, okay,
because before, as I said, I had my own apartment,
you know, barely paying the bill, you know, at a
Ramity car, so you know, the being showed a little
little prestige. Man, you know, let me get a decent
car because they could call that I had. I'm gonna
tell you this, the call I had, it had didn't

(56:00):
hit from the side on the passenger side, right so
whenever I went to pick somebody up, I would drive
and pomp on the driver's side.

Speaker 1 (56:15):
Yeah, I'm gonna tell you something.

Speaker 3 (56:17):
We had some pride. You know.

Speaker 1 (56:20):
We had a group a group purchase. We got a
land Cruiser that we all shared, whoever needed a land cruiser.
I wasn't driving then, but Tarik would often dent that
land Cruiser and get to the point where he would
pick you know, his lady friends up only on the
right side of the street, so that she could.

Speaker 3 (56:41):
Never see right exactly. That's exactly what I did.

Speaker 1 (56:49):
I see, I see. When you guys are on tour,
do you have to do Don Boyce's at libs on
Jungle Boogie?

Speaker 3 (56:58):
I did? Yeah, I tried.

Speaker 1 (57:01):
What was your first show like with the group first School?
In the Gang show?

Speaker 4 (57:06):
This is I think this is before we actually started
working on Ladies Night. I did a show with them.

Speaker 1 (57:14):
Oh you were singing with them even before?

Speaker 4 (57:16):
Yeah, right before we started. Yeah, I all needed one show.
And then right after my audition, and I think I
did an earth Wind and Fire song on their show.

Speaker 3 (57:27):
I sang a ballad. I'm trying to remember which one
it was.

Speaker 1 (57:30):
Do you have a wonderful song?

Speaker 3 (57:32):
For you. Yeah, I don't know, maybe from the Head
to the Sky album or something.

Speaker 1 (57:38):
Oh you went deep?

Speaker 4 (57:38):
Okay, yeah, something like that, you know, because he asked
me because he just wanted to show the people that,
you know, just I'll see how I you know.

Speaker 3 (57:49):
Or something. Yeah, you know, and it was very smart.

Speaker 1 (57:52):
But yeah, I mean, you're the lead singer. How do
you know things like eye contact and communicating with the
audience and you know, make the whole room feel like,
you know, the things that you will probably have to
lodge one hundred shows under your belt to truly know,
like back in your hand? Are you just being thrown

(58:13):
in the river? Like singer swim?

Speaker 3 (58:14):
She was up?

Speaker 4 (58:16):
But see again, as I said, I wasn't threatened by that,
not not about being on the front of the stage,
because I was always that guy. Like if I had
a band and then the band was called street Dancer
or or or play a Soul, I was always JT
you know, and got it.

Speaker 1 (58:33):
And we were thre if that wasn't your first show ever.

Speaker 3 (58:36):
Like you no, No, When I was thirteen we did
the Apollo What was that?

Speaker 6 (58:41):
Like?

Speaker 3 (58:42):
That was scary.

Speaker 4 (58:43):
I think we're like thirteen. We were trying to you know,
make this something we were going to do, you know,
with like our little band. And in fact, we did
the Intruders, Cowboys, the girls, We did the rehearsal. And
I never forget at the Apollo, I never I didn't
think it was going to be this raggedy downstairs right
where all the guests were. And there was the stairs

(59:05):
that you had led us, you know, to go up
to the stage, and there was this huge rat trap
under the staircase. And I'm saying, what the hell and
We're all sitting there and I'm saying, okay, so you
just blanket out of your mind. So that night, our
biggest thing was to make sure that Sandman didn't hook
us off stage.

Speaker 3 (59:27):
That was our goal. If we could do that, we
got it. And we actually came in third place.

Speaker 4 (59:32):
And this guy, uh, this older guy that's saying nat
King Cole by the way and on the piano, he
won that night.

Speaker 3 (59:40):
But but we we didn't get pulled off. We just
we were in the line.

Speaker 4 (59:44):
You know.

Speaker 3 (59:45):
Well first he was.

Speaker 4 (59:46):
Thinking hand clapped, you know. Third you know, he said, okay,
you guys come off, and then he won. So we
were just relieved that we that we didn't get pulled
off by sand Man.

Speaker 1 (59:56):
Which member of pulling the gang was the most diplomatic
and welcoming you into the fold because you're also a
rookie kind of coming to an established house where you know,
like even there was a point where Alan Iverson had
to carry the bags of six ers that he was
better than.

Speaker 3 (01:00:16):
Yah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I didn't do any of that.

Speaker 1 (01:00:19):
Which member was the most diplomatic in welcoming you into
the fold?

Speaker 4 (01:00:24):
I would say it was Calise and Cool because Cool
at the time. In fact, when we first started going
through the House of Music, he actually came up from
Jersey City and picked me up from my home and
he drove me down and back home. So Cool was
more like like that guy. And you know we started

(01:00:45):
hanging out as well. But he and I'll pay it
to Calise, I went like to meet his mom, like
Cools Calise's mom and stuff like that, you know, and I.

Speaker 3 (01:00:55):
Just think they realized I was, like, you know, I
was a down guy, like you.

Speaker 4 (01:00:58):
Know, like you could you know, I wasn't like a
rough rider, you know, but I wasn't wasn't no punk either,
you know. I was just like and musically, you know,
I could talk to them, and I actually learned so
much from just sitting around listening, because my mother said,
just keep your ears open.

Speaker 3 (01:01:15):
You don't have to talk all the time. You know.

Speaker 1 (01:01:18):
Are you significantly younger than them.

Speaker 3 (01:01:20):
Or just a few years like three? I think George
was three years at least was two. I think Cool
was three, so it wasn't too far. But a lot
of people thought I was a lot younger than them.

Speaker 1 (01:01:33):
I thought you were the baby brother.

Speaker 3 (01:01:35):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay.

Speaker 1 (01:01:37):
Which remember would you have the most conflicts.

Speaker 4 (01:01:41):
With well in the beginning, you know, none, I was.
I was hanging out with everybody. But I don't even
know where it turned. But uh, for some reason, d
ted started. We started rubbing a little bit, you know,
and I didn't understand what happened because I was I
remember him.

Speaker 3 (01:02:01):
In Penwa bringing their daughter Michelle to my room to
meet me. Actress Michelle actors yes, the late yeah and.

Speaker 4 (01:02:12):
Oracle if that matters, and so you know, it was
all all good man were hanging out, party together, and
somewhere along the line, you know, we just started friction.
And I just didn't understand it because we were constantly,
you know, banging out songs.

Speaker 3 (01:02:30):
You know, we were in the studio all the time,
and if we were in the studio, we were on
the road. And most of those albums we were actually
touring and would come home off the road and go
right to the studio, and we I think for almost
a decade, we never.

Speaker 4 (01:02:45):
Had a vacation, you know. So I didn't understand with
the success what happened. I tend to believe that more
of the focus became on me than the group. And
and I used to tell them, I said, listen, man,
who's in the studio with you, who's.

Speaker 3 (01:03:04):
On the stage with you? These people are gonna say
whatever they you know, they want and in any band, they.

Speaker 4 (01:03:10):
Usually gravitate to the lead singer no matter, you know,
if you had the Stone, people know Mick Jacket or Genesis,
they know you know Phil, you know.

Speaker 3 (01:03:18):
So it's not put you down or anything like that.
It's just the way things are.

Speaker 4 (01:03:23):
Because I was never into that mindset or you just here,
I said, man, listen, if it wasn't for this guy
being in the room, this wouldn't have happened.

Speaker 2 (01:03:32):
And I never forget that were you singing lead vocals
on every song on every album as soon as you
started on.

Speaker 4 (01:03:39):
Ladies, Yeah, but then on it was all yeah, and
in the shows and the shows yes, well, and we
didn't have like background singers either, so we had like
horn players singing background and that was sometimes you know
a bit more stressful for me because I would have
to you know, I'm m seeing singing highs and lows

(01:04:02):
singing background dancing and entertaining, and it started wearing me
out a little bit, you know, later on.

Speaker 1 (01:04:11):
For me, this is a rare chance to find out,
like what my life would have been like, you know,
had I been born maybe twenty years earlier. Like if
me and my best friend in high school still say
we started a group in seventy nine instead of ninety three,
then this is about as close as I'm going to
get to. Hmm. I wonder what it happened if the

(01:04:32):
roots came out like fifteen years earlier. So yeah, was
it a strict environment when you entered the group? Like
was there rules? Sit here too?

Speaker 3 (01:04:42):
Nothing was said.

Speaker 4 (01:04:44):
The only thing when we were my first first show
I did was till we stopped to get something to eat,
and they were trying to convince me not to eat
pork because they were only cool and police from most
of the people thought the whole band was, but it
was only the two of them, and that as you know,
I didn't mind that give up bacon then okay food,

(01:05:05):
so but as far as like musically, their vibe like
through osmosis so to speak, it premeated you, you know,
and my respect for what they did musically, I respected
that greatly, So I didn't really want to, you know,
upset the cart, you know what I mean. I was
kind of like fit in, and I think maybe Calice

(01:05:29):
felt that I had that type of spirit too, like them,
because after a while, it was almost like we had.

Speaker 3 (01:05:35):
So much to common.

Speaker 4 (01:05:36):
Like they moved their parents moved them from Youngstown for Hi,
you know, for a better life in Jersey, and my
mother moved us from South Carolina for a better life
in Jersey. So there was things that we didn't even
have to discuss that was just part of our DNA,
you know. That made it easy when.

Speaker 1 (01:05:57):
You're tracking your vocals, what's the particular environment that you're
used to, Like, is it like a whole crowd of
them there watching or is it just like do you
prefer to be alone and just with police or just
someone one person or a mirror.

Speaker 4 (01:06:15):
And in the beginning, I was so green that I
had to I wasn't accustomed to singing with headphones. Somebody
would just say, listen, just put one behind your ear,
and that was kind of weird too, you know, because
I'm listening to the room and everything. So I had
I had had to really make adjustments, and it caused
me to sing fragments like like like part of phrase,

(01:06:38):
things like that, you know, you know you sing ladies tonight,
you know, girl, y'all got one, you know, then we
have to go back, go yah, you know, do it
over again instead of singing through. And but I found
out that the more that I studied the song and
I knew it lyrically, then I could ingest the point
of the song and that made it a lot freer

(01:07:00):
for me. But I didn't really care if who was
in the studio because I didn't really see him anyway.
I would mostly see d O and like Jim Bonafon
and maybe somebody who was in the corner. But the
concentration was just trying to do the best performance. I
really wasn't worried about the people got it.

Speaker 1 (01:07:20):
I'm one of those music kids that never gravitates towards
the single. And that's because you know, in Philly before
kind of in nineteen ninety seven, Bill was signing which
like radio conglomerates could pre program all their music, you know,
black radio pretty much let their DJs be the tastemaker.

Speaker 3 (01:07:42):
And you know, yeah, but DJ's had names, you know, right.

Speaker 1 (01:07:47):
So that said cats like Doug Henderson, doctor Perry Johnson,
like all the Philly cats spinning the days. You know,
it's weird. They played Jones versus Jones.

Speaker 3 (01:07:58):
Yeah, yeah, I know more than.

Speaker 1 (01:08:01):
Like Jones versus Jones? Was that even a single?

Speaker 3 (01:08:04):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (01:08:05):
I recently found out, maybe like four or five years
ago that Stevie's Isn't She Lovely? Was never a single?

Speaker 3 (01:08:16):
What?

Speaker 4 (01:08:18):
That wasn't a single?

Speaker 1 (01:08:20):
Never a single?

Speaker 3 (01:08:21):
What?

Speaker 1 (01:08:22):
But Barry had a genius plan. He basically wanted to
guarantee a number one debut. So it was sort of
like she use what you want to play off the
album and just play it. Most people gravitated towards Isn't
She Lovely? But then weird enough, like almost nine months

(01:08:42):
later they'll officially release I Wish Yeah, yeah, like a single.
But it's like July of seventy seven.

Speaker 4 (01:08:51):
Like that was a great thing about DJs though, because
you know before even though what was that the late
night Von Hopper and all of them, Frankie Crocker and
then they would they would play singles off albums, and
that also helped us spread out.

Speaker 3 (01:09:05):
So like you, I would find songs and say, oh man,
they did this need to be a single, you know, right?
And so that was that was the power man.

Speaker 1 (01:09:14):
That was a beautiful thing when when something special first
came out, they weren't playing take my Heart, even though
I know there was the first single, right they was
Philly owned Stepping Out. Stepping Out should have been the
first single. We weren't mad at to get down on it.
That that sufficed. But you know, back when DJs would

(01:09:37):
get promos of the albums three months ahead of.

Speaker 3 (01:09:40):
Time, Yeah, why do you think that's so? Watch? Stepping Out?
Was that because of the party that the stepping parties
they had.

Speaker 1 (01:09:46):
I'm in, you know, I'm in added all the keys
to it. You're singing in a smooth falsetto. As a DJ,
I was like, well, you know, okay, so the group
that did this all the time was and I kind
of ridicule them for this, but this is also how
I live. At the Tonight show. You play any bark

(01:10:07):
song for me now, and I'll tell you the forty
five of what they were originally playing.

Speaker 3 (01:10:12):
It was like, all right, color over it, right right, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:10:15):
Listen rubek' scube and mix this up and yeah, like
shine is earth winding fires on your face or right
right right, shaking rumps to the funks, you know what
I mean? Like very diprivatve. But in my mind I
was like, I was like, I bet you stepping out
started as a quasi. Don't stop till you get enough groove.

Speaker 3 (01:10:35):
I don't know, but it's possible.

Speaker 1 (01:10:38):
Answer this for me. What is the division of labor
when you guys are recording in the studio, Like are
you all together trying to jam something out? Or is
it like here's your part, here's your part, here's your part,
and then you write the song later.

Speaker 3 (01:10:56):
It was all of that.

Speaker 4 (01:10:56):
Sometime we would be playing together, but most of the
time after Ladies night, people were bringing bits and pieces
like like when when when Charles we did Joanna. Charles
came in, it was just an alp a stroke guitar
k and he wanted to dedicate it to his mother
and we were sitting there and said, okay, dear mom,

(01:11:19):
that's what he called it. We say, well, well what else? Man?

Speaker 3 (01:11:23):
And it wasn't really much going on.

Speaker 4 (01:11:25):
And I think George was the one that said let's
let's let's just take a name Joanna Nobody. It wasn't
a Joanna.

Speaker 3 (01:11:31):
We knew. He just grabbed a name and it sang
really well and we never changed it. For example, who
directed that video. I don't know who was that.

Speaker 4 (01:11:41):
We shot that acting up in North Bergen on the
first part and then over in Lynnhurst, New Jersey at
the diner. I forget who who actually shot that though
that's a lot of fun in retrospect.

Speaker 1 (01:11:58):
How burdis them? What celebration? Because this was it like
at the rate where you released this song, do you
realize that this song is not just a hit song
like that, This song is never ever going to die
ever ever ever ever going to die.

Speaker 4 (01:12:19):
It's funny you say that because I don't know if
you had you had a long talk with police, but
I don't think police liked the guitar riff really. There
was a part that he didn't like too much because
we came off the road and it was it was
a part that was done. I think it was a
guitar riff, and he was really pissed off about that.

(01:12:41):
We used to take the cassettes home to study.

Speaker 3 (01:12:44):
And this is the truth. I played it for my mother.
That's what you think about that. She said, you're going
to sing that for the rest of your life. Really,
i Q I'm telling you, bro. She was always like that.
She was intuitive with certain things. You know.

Speaker 4 (01:13:00):
She said, you're going to sing that for the rest
of your life, and here we are. That's why that
was enough for me, but we didn't know as a
group though.

Speaker 1 (01:13:07):
That song is still in my DJ playlist, but now
it has a new meaning because I played the Spanish version. Yeah,
and when people like, you know, when people were playing
the hook like I'll eq it iss such that they
think they're in the regular version, and then when I

(01:13:28):
put the Spanish version on, it's always the moments where
they stop and they look at me and it's like
they got processed for.

Speaker 3 (01:13:37):
Four seconds right right right, and then like they're.

Speaker 1 (01:13:40):
Really like it almost energizes the more that you guys
would have been so considerate. I mean, Motown used to
do that all the time, but whatever.

Speaker 4 (01:13:47):
It burdens some to Yeah, that was a big thing
to do, but we were really huge a South America.
They and that was the labels idea. They said, listen, man,
you got a huge following to South America. Let's try
the Spanish version. And Diodado actually wrote out the lyrics
for me.

Speaker 1 (01:14:04):
How did you guys hook up with dia Data?

Speaker 3 (01:14:06):
I don't know how he came into play, except that
I think he was working at House of Music was a.

Speaker 4 (01:14:12):
John Trope if I'm not mistaken, and gave in them
talk to him about, you know, producing cool in the gang.

Speaker 3 (01:14:20):
That was before I came, So I don't really know
that entire story.

Speaker 2 (01:14:25):
What was Deodata from your perspective, bringing to the production,
to the making of the music or the arrangements or
anything like that.

Speaker 4 (01:14:33):
Well, the most I had heard, you know, he was
this unbelievable arranger. I didn't know much about him, and
so I just started looking them up, you know, and
I think he had Did he have.

Speaker 3 (01:14:44):
Two thousand and one Space Odyssey?

Speaker 1 (01:14:46):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (01:14:48):
Yeah, yeah at that time, but beyond But more so
than that, I just heard that his collection of and
respect that he had as an arranger was pretty pretty
watch bread. Everybody that that spoke of him spoke very
highly of him. So when he would talk to us
about music, it wasn't so much telling us this is

(01:15:10):
that I'm going to put this major chord here and
this minor. It wasn't that, it was just he would
do it. And he would always do it with a smile,
with his little cigarette in his mouth, you know, his piece,
and you know, an unassuming guy. But when he brought
the orchestra in to do the streaming work, that's when
I opened my mind again and saw him. They you know,

(01:15:33):
they greeted him as doctor, and I said yes. And
it actually flipped me back to when I was in
high school or what was it, maybe grade school, when
my my music teacher took us to see how the
West was Won in New York the movie but it
was a screenplay, and I mean screen was on a
movie was on screen, but there was a real orchestra.

(01:15:55):
And that was my first time seeing an orchestra. So
when I saw dal do that, you know, I had
become accustomed to first be quiet and listen and understand
how parts work together.

Speaker 5 (01:16:07):
I'm I was always curious what he was bringing to
that the recipe.

Speaker 4 (01:16:11):
Yeah, it was I again, I'm all ears man and
just bringing it all in and I think that his
the key thing was just his arrangements.

Speaker 5 (01:16:21):
Yeah. Was he playing any of the keyboards?

Speaker 3 (01:16:24):
Uh yeah, sometimes he did.

Speaker 4 (01:16:25):
Yeah, But he also brought in a couple of people,
this guy named Adam on Too Hot. If you listen
to Too Hot real close, there's a Fender Roads in
the back besides the whole courts that are playing, and
it's making these certain movements that each time I I
have a band keyboards try to play it, they usually

(01:16:45):
uh miss that because the movements have all these overtones going,
you know, for those Roads had that beautiful reverb bottom
you know.

Speaker 3 (01:16:54):
So, but yeah, he was, he's he's a master man.
He's he's a tre as You're no.

Speaker 4 (01:17:00):
I think if he had met him, oh the group
had met him, we would have all these hits.

Speaker 1 (01:17:11):
I would probably say that something special is that's sentimental
to me? Because you know I got that for Christmas.
It was Christmas. Christmas of eighty one was a special
Christmas one.

Speaker 3 (01:17:23):
Yeah yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:17:24):
Of your canon, which album do you feel is your
best performance and of your song catalog?

Speaker 2 (01:17:33):
How are you going to steal my question, like this
mister quest left take it away? Well, no, no, because
actually they are coming from you, because it's kind of like,
you know, it's kind of you're not supposed to ask
this question really, you know, like because they're all in
your baby.

Speaker 1 (01:17:46):
Yeah, what's your favorite kid?

Speaker 6 (01:17:47):
You like?

Speaker 3 (01:17:48):
Yeah, right, exactly. But I'll say the album wise, it
would be Emergency. Okay, wow, Emergency album.

Speaker 1 (01:17:56):
But I think that was also the biggest selling correct.

Speaker 4 (01:17:59):
Yeah, double yeah, biggest so but I still say, you know,
too Hot has something that's romantic that because when I
listened to it, you know, I could listen I remember
how again, I was still learning things, and I could
hear vocal things that I said, we'll do that now,

(01:18:20):
you know, or things that, being more mature and able
to do more with my voice now, things I would
have tried something a little different. But I think Too
Hot as a song, but Emergency as the album.

Speaker 1 (01:18:37):
Wait, I don't know if I got the answer. Did
Celebration become burdensome at all?

Speaker 3 (01:18:42):
Like?

Speaker 1 (01:18:43):
Did it get too big for you? Do you feel
like it was ridiculed too much? Was it too successful?

Speaker 3 (01:18:48):
No? Not for me?

Speaker 1 (01:18:50):
Like this song took you places that I don't think
your other contemporaries like they weren't your contemporaries. It wasn't
like BT Express or Mass Production or hell, even Earth
Wind and Fire kind of stalled at the gate of
the early eighties, and you guys were able to go
places that they weren't able to go.

Speaker 4 (01:19:09):
It was electric man, because again, you know, you know,
you write songs and when you finish, you just feel
good about it. You don't know what's going to happen
with it, you know, you just put your heart and
soul into it. And that's basically what we did.

Speaker 3 (01:19:24):
And there was the pieces. We had a mechanic over here.

Speaker 4 (01:19:27):
One got twisted and knob there, this guy turned that
one just did that, and we put it together and
the label said, I.

Speaker 3 (01:19:34):
Think we got something.

Speaker 4 (01:19:35):
But you know, if the machine isn't there a lot
of songs that may have been a celebration level, you.

Speaker 3 (01:19:41):
Know, don't make it. We had everything, everything was.

Speaker 4 (01:19:45):
Lined up for us, you know, and with me becoming
more of a face and a sound that was becoming familiar,
they kind of.

Speaker 3 (01:19:53):
Went with that, you know, and even the yahoos and
all that stuff.

Speaker 4 (01:19:58):
And you know, I always tell that joke, you know,
you're very rarely hear like a black group say Yahoo.

Speaker 3 (01:20:03):
You know that that's usually out for the country groups.
You know what I mean? Right, But it was again,
you know, you got the low voice. It's a solo graces, you.

Speaker 1 (01:20:12):
Know, so something for everybody to sing.

Speaker 3 (01:20:15):
Yeah, yeah, and you just sing along.

Speaker 4 (01:20:16):
And we talked about the bob mitsfih you're talking about.
You know, the worst thing is when you hear them
playing the wrong inversion.

Speaker 1 (01:20:23):
I'm sure you've been pretty to every version of celebration,
knowing the man.

Speaker 3 (01:20:27):
I'm telling you, man.

Speaker 4 (01:20:28):
And the worst when they tried to get me to
come up and sing no, I had too many drinks already, so.

Speaker 1 (01:20:36):
Oh, cooler game, saying at our host, Yah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:20:40):
Exactly, Jay to come down, tell me about.

Speaker 1 (01:20:42):
Okay, So if you don't want to answer, you don't
have to answer, go go to it.

Speaker 3 (01:20:47):
Man.

Speaker 1 (01:20:47):
What were the hedonistic eighties?

Speaker 4 (01:20:49):
Like girls, girls, girls, some drugs? All right, But we
didn't we didn't really really get into that. It was
just again, the success became big within a year to
two year period that it consumed us in a way

(01:21:10):
that we did. I don't think that the group knew
how to be, how to receive it in that way,
you know.

Speaker 1 (01:21:18):
So for you to come in at seventy nine and
you're pretty much coming into a situation one you know
that bring success and you're kind of the reason for
that success. Yeah, But I always wanted to know for
the band members that were there before nineteen sixty nine,

(01:21:41):
before the label deals and all that stuff, or Spike
for DT, for Cool, for Calice, for George, what is
success for them?

Speaker 3 (01:21:54):
Like?

Speaker 1 (01:21:56):
I mean, you guys are the only Americans besides as
Judie Wattley at do they know it's Christmas?

Speaker 3 (01:22:04):
Right?

Speaker 1 (01:22:04):
But you guys are at a crazy level of notoriety.
So how are they adjusting to this? If you can
speak for them.

Speaker 3 (01:22:16):
I really can't. But all I know is that we
all shared and everything equally.

Speaker 4 (01:22:22):
It wasn't like at a certain point, you know, when
we were at one time flying coach, you know what
I mean, you're flying first class full you know, when
at tension started happening, I started having my own car.
Stuff like that happened. But when we hit the stage,
it was about let's go take this, Let's put the
flag down, you know, And and all of this stuff

(01:22:45):
really helped me segue into my solo career, right, it was.
It was a really proven ground, but I can't really
speak to how they received it, whether they were overjoyed,
because they never said to me me, you know, don't
forget this is the group, you know, or don't think
you're too big, and stuff like that that came from outside,

(01:23:08):
you know.

Speaker 3 (01:23:09):
And it was time for me to make my exit.

Speaker 4 (01:23:11):
It had reached a height where that type of tension
had gotten to too much and I didn't think that
they had my back anymore.

Speaker 3 (01:23:20):
And we did a show it and I forget it.

Speaker 4 (01:23:23):
New Year's done, Atlantic City, and I had flu and
I was really, really sick, and of course back then
I was about one p fifty, you know what I mean,
soaking wet, and we had been touring and it was
the end of the year, and you know, New Year's
was always big money night.

Speaker 3 (01:23:42):
And I was sick, but I refused not to perform.

Speaker 4 (01:23:46):
And I went out there and sound voices half gone,
and I doing cherish and I closed. I closed my
eyes and when I tried to open them, all I
saw was no not an object, just a wall of red,
like just red. And I froze and I opened my

(01:24:08):
eyes again, and it came open, but then it went
red again, and I got scared to death man, and
I was able to walk backstage and poll I think poor.
I pulled cool off of somebody. I said, listen play
jungle Boy Holly was swinging something. Let me go back
here and get myself together. And when I couldn't, I

(01:24:28):
had to come back out and I left the stage
that particular night. I'm back there and all my family
was at the audience. You know, they ran backstage. People
even fans were coming back saying, you know, what's wrong
with what happened. They knew something was wrong because I've
never been like this, and I'm sitting in my room
and none of the guys came over to see how

(01:24:48):
I was doing, except one.

Speaker 3 (01:24:50):
Guy, Curtis, and he told them, he said, God, didn't
you see this guy sick? You know, he can't do it.

Speaker 4 (01:24:56):
And that part hurt me more because I felt that
their interest was more worrying about making the money the
brand than a guy who who've been here since the
really label was gonna was going to drop you guys
in the seventies, and we got together and it was
never I never claimed it was just me, you know,

(01:25:16):
never had that attitude. But to get to this point
and you don't even come back to check on the guy,
I said, that's it.

Speaker 3 (01:25:24):
And I and I left.

Speaker 1 (01:25:26):
That's how you left the group.

Speaker 4 (01:25:27):
Yeah, that night, I called my family and I said,
I got it. I can't do this anymore. So it
was it was obviously back to your question that they
must have felt something along the way, more than what
I felt of them, because I never looked at them
any other way except what we did. And uh, but

(01:25:50):
that was that was that was a rough time because
I was really really sick, but I never let on.
And you know I've had that many times over the years.
I was not well and I still did shows, you know,
because I knew I had more responsibility just myself. You know,
they had families, you know, themselves. We had records to
break and you know, sacrifice, man, you know you can

(01:26:11):
do this. And many times I'd just go back to
my room and you know, taking mirror and gin sing
and you know, all these different things. And I mean
a clip for Adams, you know, he would he was
into all of that and he would be me Golden Seal,
and I'm.

Speaker 3 (01:26:26):
Like, you know, trying to get right. So but I
never let on, hey man, I can't sing the night.
You know. Sometime like when we.

Speaker 4 (01:26:35):
Started to sing a stepping out, it was difficult because
it was a falsetto right, and you know, sometimes that
click wouldn't happen and it would take like a few
songs to get there, so we'd have to like take
that out of the set.

Speaker 3 (01:26:47):
But most of the time, you know, you can walk
your way through it, you know. But but that was it, man.

Speaker 4 (01:26:53):
But again, and what I got into, you know, my
solo solo dealing. You know, my first I met with
Gerald Busby and Jerrold said, listen, man, I don't think
you need to be at motow. You need to go
talk to Clive and and I remember sitting with Clive

(01:27:15):
and Clive played for me. You don't believe us. That's
what friends are for. In his office, you know, with
Luther and Stevie and and and at that time I
thought maybe he felt that maybe I should be one
that was singing that could do that and make a
long story short.

Speaker 3 (01:27:33):
M c A offered me more money, so I ended
up signing with.

Speaker 1 (01:27:37):
M c A over there or The Master of the
Game album.

Speaker 3 (01:27:40):
Master the Game.

Speaker 4 (01:27:41):
I was the first yeah, master of the game, and uh,
you know, working with little Silas over there, A and R.

Speaker 1 (01:27:48):
I hear a lot about him, but his name always
comes up when it's like new edition related stories or whatever.
But what was it like being on your own and
only yourself to answer to?

Speaker 4 (01:28:02):
It was a little frightening, I was must say, got
frightening because you know, I was so used to from
you know, being a young teenager, always with the band.
You know, like I said, it was electro five, you know,
the street dance of these bands, file at soul, you know,
moved the gang.

Speaker 3 (01:28:16):
It was always like a group of collection, you know.

Speaker 4 (01:28:19):
And when I got out there, I realized that I
didn't know as much as I needed to know about
how to really structure songs.

Speaker 3 (01:28:31):
Like complete you know what I mean.

Speaker 4 (01:28:32):
I could do parts and things like that, but and lyrics,
but I didn't claim to be a pianist, like a
skill musician and nothing like this.

Speaker 3 (01:28:40):
But I could anything I hear, I can write. I've
always had that, you know. And when when I got
with MCA, I.

Speaker 4 (01:28:50):
Realized that they wanted me to do something like I
had done before with cooling them, and I was already
beyond that. You know, I wanted to be more of
a eclectic artists and bringing the styles that I loved,
you know, from rock and all these different things, and
so I hoped it was this guy named Dennis mccowski. Okay,

(01:29:12):
he introduced me to James ingram Ta, Vega, Rose Stone,
Phil Perry, James you know, Jeff Pericaro, Paulino Da Costa,
and I was like, okay, this is this. I love this,
this this collection right here. And that's when I started
working on Massive Game and plus publishers were sending me

(01:29:33):
songs uh to uh to choose from, you know, and
that kind of helped me a lot. But Louell, he
was there the whole time trying to help me get
a hit record, you know, because again I got paid
well and the record company was just kind of letting
me do what I wanted to do. And uh, you know,

(01:29:53):
the first single, I still think they picked the wrong song.
They picked the other song Sister Rosa, and I did
a video with Michael Peters, you know who did Thriller,
you know, Michael and all that stuff, and uh, we
went did the whole video and everything like this, but
they didn't jump on the record because I still think

(01:30:13):
they should have chosen Romancia or some other Yeah, yeah,
you know, and uh so that kind of a little
bit of taste there. And you know, people were expecting
j T the song. You know, it ain't no ladies night,
you know, when are you gonna do that? And I
was doing my interviews, I'd tell everybody I said, well
I did that, and my mind isn't there now. And

(01:30:37):
that's when I think Bobby Brown hit a new edition
right and by Bobby was blowing the doors out, you know,
right there, and.

Speaker 3 (01:30:47):
They said, well, won't you give me something like that?
And I was like, I said, then you talked to
Bobby and he's like, well man, we tried to be
like what you what you did?

Speaker 4 (01:30:55):
You know? So how you guys telling me to do
something like that? So it started. That's when the mill
start to turning, and we knew we had to, you know,
kind of go back at it, you know. And and
even with James Ingram, all these guys on, they still
didn't you know, promoted the right way.

Speaker 1 (01:31:13):
Was it hard adjusting in an environment more conducive to
like New Jack Swing than say, the kind of musicianship
that you were used to like? Was it what does
it mean to be faced with a pivot, you know,

(01:31:34):
instead of a band, you might have to have two
dancers with you.

Speaker 3 (01:31:38):
That was fun. I did that.

Speaker 4 (01:31:40):
I did in fact, actually that Teddy, Yeah, Teddy Teddy
actually did a song you know, eight days for me.

Speaker 3 (01:31:48):
So I had those dancers. But it was again, it
wasn't it was music, man, it wasn't. This is not
rocket science here, you know, it's like, what do you feel?

Speaker 4 (01:31:57):
You know, I'm still same way today, you know, like
I write every day and it's always something that you know,
I'm sure when I finished with you, you know, I'm
going to write something about this experience.

Speaker 3 (01:32:11):
So wow, I said, let's go at it.

Speaker 1 (01:32:14):
Okay, Hey, in the history of you being a professional singer,
as anyone ever yelled fire and rein to you from
the audience, you.

Speaker 5 (01:32:27):
Did steal my question, I was.

Speaker 2 (01:32:31):
I was honestly wondering about that today about look at
his victory pose.

Speaker 5 (01:32:35):
That's great.

Speaker 3 (01:32:38):
No.

Speaker 2 (01:32:38):
I used to sort of study the the publishing stuff
in credits and in like sort of books, and I
was always wondering if if the publishing ever got crossed
between you guys, you know, and anything not.

Speaker 3 (01:32:51):
The money at that time, he was making big money
and we weren't, but but I used to.

Speaker 4 (01:32:56):
When I first went solo, the public just got things
mixed up. In fact, at the at the Rock and
Roll Hall of Fame, he came over to my room
and I'm in the dressing room and he came over
to meet me.

Speaker 3 (01:33:10):
He said, I always wanted to beat you. I said, really,
and no, that was the first time y'all met. That's
the first time we met, right.

Speaker 1 (01:33:17):
I wish I could have been there for that.

Speaker 4 (01:33:19):
Yeah, man, And he came over and we hugged each
other and we share share some you know, conversation, and.

Speaker 3 (01:33:25):
I told him that story.

Speaker 4 (01:33:27):
I said, I was getting the like kind of country songs, man,
And you know, my my manager said, wait a minute,
I think this supposed to be for the other James Taylor.

Speaker 3 (01:33:35):
So we had a laugh and I said, I want
to do something with you. He said, let's do that.
You know, so that may happen in the near future.

Speaker 1 (01:33:43):
Voices I approve with that. Do you know Marvin ever
heard you're not to him on? Take my heart if
you want it.

Speaker 4 (01:33:53):
I don't know, man, but I've been tell you because
you know, I'm a big Marvin fan. As well, but
we were doing the that's when I was still with Cool.
We did the rain I think the Rainbow Room or
the Rainbow Theater in London. And we're on stage because
I don't know what song we were singing, and I
looked to my left over in the corner and Marvin

(01:34:14):
is standing in the way man.

Speaker 3 (01:34:17):
Almost like.

Speaker 4 (01:34:19):
Yeah, he was living there, right, So of course I
had to bring him on and just walking on stage
place with berserk and you know, he walked off and
we were taking a picture to the other. Look, he's
looking over at me like this, you know, looking down
on me.

Speaker 3 (01:34:35):
He said, j T. You know I can slam dunk you.

Speaker 5 (01:34:37):
You know that, right?

Speaker 3 (01:34:39):
I said, bro, I can play ball too, but let's
do this. We never got to play, but he was
he was amazing.

Speaker 1 (01:34:46):
Man.

Speaker 3 (01:34:46):
I would have loved to just take the ball to
him a little bit because he was a tall He
was kind of a tall guy. It would have been tough.
But yeah, but no, I don't know if he ever did.

Speaker 1 (01:34:57):
It's one of my favorite Ada libs of Jews.

Speaker 3 (01:35:00):
So I was actually talking to George because George wrote
the song.

Speaker 1 (01:35:05):
And I was like, I said, like Marvin marveling huh right, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
exactly exactly. You know, there was a time period in
which videos were not necessary but could be an option
to help you sell a little more if you were
trying to get your stuff played on like Top of
the Pops or you know, if you couldn't get to

(01:35:26):
Europe in time. What was the video process like? Because
even that video for Misled, which I'll never understand, like
are you just showing up and like, okay, it's a
chase scene with an Indiana Jones and a bunch of
white popes dancing around me, Like.

Speaker 4 (01:35:44):
Yeah, right, well, you know, you know, of course I've
always been into film, you know, and like even right now,
you know the my future project that I'm working on
now I'll tell you.

Speaker 6 (01:35:56):
About that in a minute.

Speaker 4 (01:35:57):
But okay, because I was in the film earlier in
my life, I was able to when videos came along,
I could process everything that's happened because most of our
songs was like a storyboard, you know, And you mentioned Misled.

Speaker 6 (01:36:09):
It was about you know, it was basically Coalice's.

Speaker 4 (01:36:11):
Life story, part of his life story, and my my input,
and it was the metaphor of the white Dancer was
like she was like the cocaine that people were taking,
you know, misleading, looking beautiful and everything and taking you
down that rabbit hole, you know.

Speaker 6 (01:36:32):
And my nephew who played the as a young kid. Yeah,
that was my nephew, yeah, you know. And so to
bring that part in, that was.

Speaker 4 (01:36:41):
Theatrical and the special effects. So and then the one
thing that happened on that video was that we said
how are we going to get the band in? And
I wrote most of that concept. I said, well, you
guys are going to be you know, incognito as well,
and it's a dream state. So that's why you know,
that happened. And when we came at the end and

(01:37:02):
they were like JT, we got to go, man, we
got a gig to do, they were in the dream
and that's when they turned around. So Michael definitely influenced
that as far as the video because remember MTV wasn't
playing us, and Michael turned that around. So that's when
the whole video thing for black artists started kicking in.

(01:37:22):
And we knew that Michael had raised the bar, so
we had to raise the bar because if you remember,
on most of the charts, if we knew Michael was coming,
we had to get our position first, you know, because
you know we're going to knock you out a number one,
but being there in the top five or top ten,

(01:37:42):
that means in the stores your music was right there
along inside his and it would help your sales.

Speaker 3 (01:37:48):
You know. All of that.

Speaker 6 (01:37:49):
The video world actually helped me with the project I'm
doing now and what my future.

Speaker 3 (01:37:55):
Is going to be.

Speaker 1 (01:37:56):
Got it At the time you guys get invited to
you band aid, like, do you have any ankling of
a clue what you guys walked into?

Speaker 6 (01:38:07):
No, because we were on tour again.

Speaker 1 (01:38:09):
I just had a night off in London.

Speaker 6 (01:38:12):
We were actually just I don't know if we I
think we did having night off.

Speaker 4 (01:38:16):
But the thing that that bothered me was that they
had mentioned i think on the news or something that
you know, it was all of these big stars there
and when we got there, there was no cameras and
I remember telling DT, I said, you know, with the
press man and all people telling about the press and
we walked in. No one said, you know, okay, JT,

(01:38:40):
you're going to be doing this and it's going to
be doing that. We kind of just walked in the
studio and there was everybody was just sitting around the
room and and pill Collins and and Geldolfs and they
were behind the board and they just kind of waved
and you know, and later on I thought somebody mentioned
that they wanted me to do the part that what

(01:39:02):
tonight thank God, and I didn't.

Speaker 6 (01:39:04):
I'm glad they didn't ask me because I would have
never done that.

Speaker 2 (01:39:07):
Beuchne Bono's line, thank God it's you, it's them instead
of you.

Speaker 4 (01:39:13):
I said, well, I would have never sang that anyway,
because that's just a little too much for me. You know,
I wouldn't thank God it's you. You know that that's
not my vibe, you know what I mean.

Speaker 3 (01:39:25):
But yeah, it was.

Speaker 4 (01:39:26):
It was awesome, man, but we still didn't know how
it was going to come out. I just enjoyed, you know,
meet and you know, sting and fill. But it was
it was intense. It was like no time to really
hang out and talk about it. And when they put
us all on the stands together, it.

Speaker 6 (01:39:42):
Was just like, Okay, this is what we're going to sing.
We learned the song and we went through the process.

Speaker 1 (01:39:49):
For you, what was the best like when you think
of like the good times or whatever, like places you
played or even people you met or people that you
never I thought you meet. What's a career highlight for
you of something like like, wow, I can't believe this happened.

Speaker 4 (01:40:07):
There's many, okay, But I think going to Africa for
the first time was monumental because I remember when we
were at House of Music once and this is doing
a part time and this agent came to the studio

(01:40:30):
and asked us to play, and that's when everybody was
refusing to place some city.

Speaker 6 (01:40:35):
It was part of our protests, and I remember looking
at this guy almost tearing up that how could he
have the nerve to come here and ask us to
perform there, knowing the atrocities that were going on, right
And I remember we got a silver record I think

(01:40:58):
from South Africa, and.

Speaker 4 (01:41:01):
When we got it, I said, I refuse to hang
this up in my house until Mandela is freed, and
I put it in the closet, and when he was freed,
I took it out and celebrated that. But I think
going to Liberia and then learning about the slave quarters

(01:41:22):
and where our people were brought from the shores and
things like that, the Ivory Coast up and down, you know,
And I always felt like I didn't want to take
money out of there like like I because it wasn't
really built up as.

Speaker 3 (01:41:39):
Much like Ghana right like it is now, you know.
And I just didn't.

Speaker 6 (01:41:43):
Understand what I understood.

Speaker 4 (01:41:45):
But I didn't feel good about doing a concert and
taking money from a place that we should have just
left it there, you know.

Speaker 6 (01:41:56):
But I think Africa was. It's still to this day
the feeling I get that touches my heart most.

Speaker 3 (01:42:07):
One.

Speaker 1 (01:42:08):
Congratulations on getting in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Yes,
thank you. Were you surprised or were you actively hoping
for this?

Speaker 3 (01:42:16):
Well?

Speaker 4 (01:42:17):
You know, I tell the story I said, it's when
I think back to being at thirteen, you never think
about it. You never think about any accolades, at least
I did. My whole thing was just a love for music.

Speaker 3 (01:42:29):
Man.

Speaker 6 (01:42:29):
And you know when they told us about the rock
of course, I call all my family and.

Speaker 4 (01:42:35):
I think they announced it on the American Idol or
something like that, and we were all sitting around watching
waiting for it to come on.

Speaker 6 (01:42:43):
When they said bam, cool the gang. My phone jumping
off the hook, people talking about how can I get there?

Speaker 3 (01:42:48):
I want to come.

Speaker 6 (01:42:49):
We had a lot of family there. But it was
just a culmination of all of the years of.

Speaker 3 (01:42:57):
The sweat being.

Speaker 4 (01:42:59):
Away from my family, having my family there and enjoining
some of it, coming into cooling the gang and then.

Speaker 6 (01:43:06):
Leaving the group.

Speaker 4 (01:43:08):
And also, you know, I brought everything from Hackensack High
School to you know, the bands I was in too,
you know, Jersey City. Anybody that I met along the
way were a part of it. And that's including you,
your group, the Philly sound Motown, so you know anything,

(01:43:28):
it was like I was. It was like I was
bringing all of you with me, you know. And then
of course, you know, to find out that you were
going to be with me, I'm like, oh, man, this
is too good to be true, you know. So you
know when I walked up and met you, you know,
I was like yo, right in the middle of playing Yo, man,
what's up?

Speaker 6 (01:43:45):
And I got a good picture. I want to say
to you about that too, But.

Speaker 1 (01:43:48):
I was nervous, man, and like, you know, well you
were nervous.

Speaker 6 (01:43:52):
Come on, man, you were smacking.

Speaker 1 (01:43:53):
No, I mean, but just you the only legendary illuminary
of like my life sound check track that I haven't
met yet, you know what I mean.

Speaker 4 (01:44:02):
So yeah, it was awesome and you guys play man
and it was And the thing about it, it was
that you wouldn't believe this that night.

Speaker 3 (01:44:11):
That was a week.

Speaker 4 (01:44:11):
That week I had some dental work done right, and
I had this I don't know if you ever heard
of TMJ, but it's winter your jaw locks.

Speaker 6 (01:44:23):
So that whole night and the performance, I couldn't open
my mouth with this much what so I'm.

Speaker 4 (01:44:30):
Singing and in rehearsal I was actually when I was
walking around the stage, was trying to find the vowel
sounds of how I was going to say certain things.

Speaker 6 (01:44:41):
And I couldn't hit like the high notes. Yahoo, if
you listen back to I couldn't. I couldn't do it. Oh, wow,
old night. So I was in a little bit of
an agony while I was enjoying myself. That's a story
nobody could tell, right. I didn't know, man, nobody knew it.

Speaker 1 (01:44:58):
You know, we wouldn't been the wiser.

Speaker 3 (01:45:01):
Wow.

Speaker 4 (01:45:01):
But the night was awesome, bro, And it's like it's
something that I will you know, treasure forever.

Speaker 1 (01:45:07):
Before that night, had you had any contact with cool Like,
was that the first time you guys spoke since the
reunion or.

Speaker 3 (01:45:18):
Oh no, no.

Speaker 4 (01:45:18):
The first time was a few years ago when we
were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, got it.
And that was the first time I had seen them
and since the early nineties. I still went in there like,
you know, just proud of what we had accomplished over
the years. And you know, so they all came to

(01:45:41):
me and we spoke and they were cordial and and
in fact, Plice came to me and pulled me to
the side and said, man, whyn't we get back together
and do this again. And I was taken back because
we did celebration that night, got our award, and you
know it, we went our separate wates and again going

(01:46:02):
back to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. That
was the other thing that was kind of bittersweet that,
you know, George and Charles d T. Clifford and they
were there and it was like I'm sitting with their
wives and their children, you know, there we're talking and
things like this, and you know, I was just a
little empty.

Speaker 6 (01:46:22):
There was a space there that was empty, you know.

Speaker 4 (01:46:24):
But I hope that if they're looking down, they appreciated
what Cool and I did along with you know, you and.

Speaker 6 (01:46:31):
The roots as well.

Speaker 5 (01:46:32):
What are you working on now?

Speaker 4 (01:46:34):
Well, you know the thing right now is I just
kind of you know, I was right before COVID hit,
you know, I realized I was doing out.

Speaker 6 (01:46:43):
Going out doing all these one nighters.

Speaker 4 (01:46:45):
You know, money was great and everything, but every day
you leave, you know, you come back home, you lose
three days, three or four days.

Speaker 6 (01:46:52):
And when I was working on I started working on.

Speaker 4 (01:46:55):
This project with my son, who was a filmmaker and
a director, and we weren't getting anywhere, and so I said, listen,
I got to stop touring. And actually COVID helped me
because nobody was really working that much anyway. So like
I've always done, I said, well, I want to do
something that hasn't been done before, or something different and

(01:47:18):
include different genres social media, film, music, and make a
combination of all of those things and involve people like yourself,
you know, your group, and different artists from different genres
around and include like like the visual effects of things,
and you know, to vote all the time to new

(01:47:41):
kind of music and development, you know, and you know
it's enhanced my knowledge, you know, or directing and writing
in that genre without letting everything.

Speaker 3 (01:47:49):
Out of the bag.

Speaker 4 (01:47:51):
It's like, you know, when you're trying to do something
that hasn't been done, it takes a lot of attention.
You know, you have to go through every little piece.
Is not just one creative idea. The idea grew and
now we're at a point where we're at I would
say the script for example, you know, and all I

(01:48:15):
can say to you is, I will promise to lead
you on as we've developed this because it's something that
hopefully will you will be a part of.

Speaker 6 (01:48:24):
I'll just actually straight out, you know. Uh, And I
think that it's something that is needed today because when
I listened to some of.

Speaker 4 (01:48:34):
The music that's out here, it seems like things are
either plateaued or just have staged.

Speaker 1 (01:48:41):
A little stagnant, little vibrational yeah, you know, so we
need we need.

Speaker 6 (01:48:46):
A little something.

Speaker 4 (01:48:47):
And you know, and usually over the years, you know,
we've had a collective of people doing so many different
styles that we could pull from anywhere. You know, Now
it just seems like there's some some things that are
just not you know, when I listen to it, I'm
not being fed as much. So right, you know, six
years of like revising this this project, you know, I'm

(01:49:10):
kind of looking at some things that I wrote down,
combining like the mediums of music and filming. But it's
it's like, I can I explain this. It will be
something that will be future, but something with grassroots of
the arts, Okay, something I think that everyone will be
able to relate to.

Speaker 1 (01:49:30):
All I got to say is, uh, man, you are
in the highest sense of the term of class act.

Speaker 3 (01:49:36):
Man.

Speaker 1 (01:49:37):
You just you know, I'm so glad you got your flowers.
I'm so glad you got recognition. And that's often hard,
especially for a lot of our brothers and sisters who
are pioneers, our leaders, and oftentimes their artwork is taken
for granted and they're not given the proper respect to you.

(01:49:59):
And you are that person, man.

Speaker 4 (01:50:01):
I appreciate that, you know, and those artists that you mentioned,
you know, deserve to be heard, they deserve to h
to have that like that, that renaissance, you know. Uh
And and I really think that this project, you know,
I'm going to do that and listen before we be
in this. Man, there's so much more to talk about,

(01:50:22):
but I just first want to, you know, congratulate you
on the Summer Soul.

Speaker 6 (01:50:26):
Thank you, Hey, bro, where's that oscar? Man, I'm looking
for that goal. Look behind you over there and put
that statue up behind me.

Speaker 1 (01:50:35):
This is my office, man, I keep my oscar at home.

Speaker 6 (01:50:37):
But yeah, well this is going to be another one, bro.

Speaker 3 (01:50:41):
I mean it was.

Speaker 4 (01:50:41):
It was really so well put together, man. And like
the way you when you brought in the people from
hallm you know, telling their stories. The way you interplayed
that with the music, it was like it was like
a story book.

Speaker 6 (01:50:53):
It was magical.

Speaker 5 (01:50:54):
Man.

Speaker 4 (01:50:54):
You you have a special gift with that. And as
I said, you know, with the special that you doing,
I think it's great to hear because it kind of
leads into what we're what we're doing now.

Speaker 5 (01:51:05):
I want to say some sort of an announcement of
my own. I've done the math JT.

Speaker 2 (01:51:11):
And since you've technically technically technically appeared at the most
bar mitzvahs in the history of bar mitzvah, I am
announcing that you have been declared an honorary Jew and
you can consider yourself bar Mitzvah.

Speaker 6 (01:51:25):
All right, do I have to have to learn my
speech and everything?

Speaker 5 (01:51:29):
You're part of the Hebrew persuasion.

Speaker 3 (01:51:32):
There you go.

Speaker 1 (01:51:33):
Thank you very much, brother, for doing this podcast and
you know on behalf of the family and Suger Steve
this Quest Love Brother James, J T. Taylor, the one
and only.

Speaker 6 (01:51:44):
Thank you so much, love you, Thank you guys, appreciate it.

Speaker 5 (01:51:48):
Thank you so much.

Speaker 3 (01:51:49):
J T.

Speaker 5 (01:51:49):
That was.

Speaker 7 (01:51:51):
This is Sugar Steve. Thank you for listening to Quest
Love Supreme. This podcast is hosted by mere Quest Love Thompson,
Lijah Saint Clair, Sugar Steve Mandel, and unpaid Bill Sherman.
The executive producers are a mere Quest of Thompson, Sean
g and Brian Calhoun. Produced by Brittany Benjamin, Jake Payne
and Liiah Saint Clair. Edited by Alex Conroy. Produced for

(01:52:14):
iHeart by Noel Brown. West Love Supreme is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.

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Laiya St. Clair

Questlove

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}James "JT" Taylor