July 12, 2023 • 51 mins
For years, Questlove Supreme has wanted to speak with Leroy Burgess and now it has happened. The legendary singer, songwriter, and producer revisits his New York City upbringing. In Part 1, he explains his family ties to Thom Bell, Ricky Bell, Robert "Kool" Bell, and others, and recalls the formation of Black Ivory. In this episode he also speaks about sampling, and the different experiences he had watching his music become source material for Q-Tip, Raekwon, Grand Puba, and others.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
West Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio, Ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
This is West Love Supreme.
Speaker 3 (00:11):
I'm giving you, guys fear of warning now that if
you ever complained about my inside baseball.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Method of interviewing Ben, You're not going to be any
happier with this physical episode. However, if you.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
Are a music head and you know your music, and
you know your album credit, and you know your.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Producers and your legends, love this episode.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
First of all, we were just complaining that, you know,
after doing those.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Four shows together and.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Back in prison again soon counch prison.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
I'm saying.
Speaker 4 (00:55):
You trapped in the sixties.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
I was about to say, France, you're you're currently right now,
you're back in North Carolina.
Speaker 4 (01:05):
No, I'm this is not prison for me.
Speaker 5 (01:07):
I'm actually doing quite well.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
He actually made it quite clear that you know, this
is he's living the dream right now.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Is.
Speaker 4 (01:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (01:19):
Man, But you know, but but this was an episode
I really did wish we could have done in personal.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
God, if we would have done this in person, this
episode will probably be seven hours.
Speaker 4 (01:29):
Right.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
You know what I'm saying, You're looking well and clear today,
like you you got to share your secret. I worked
out and took a shower. Okay, something like it's fresh.
Speaker 4 (01:44):
You know what I'm saying?
Speaker 3 (01:44):
Like, Bill, our two friends in the corner, you know,
am I looking well?
Speaker 4 (01:51):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Man, you look you look awesome, Steve.
Speaker 4 (01:53):
I put on some brown coconut oils for you for
the show.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
That's what's up, man, That's what's up?
Speaker 4 (01:59):
Bill?
Speaker 2 (02:00):
How you doing? So?
Speaker 3 (02:02):
You really missed an important episode with Angie Martinez.
Speaker 4 (02:05):
By the way, Oh my god?
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Why we took it back to the old school.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
I feel like we should only do the in persons,
and we should only do them in certain ways.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
And I miss them already and it's been days. Hey man,
all right? Also, I just like hugging Fonte. I haven't
it was great? Man, my microdve supreme. That'll be the
I have to revitalize myself anyway. Continue. Yeah, so, ladies
and gentlemen, I will say that.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
This I sound like a broken record. This episode has
been a long time coming.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
This is I.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
Feel like the forty fifth president when he ever does
those like meaningless you know you're about to see the
likes of an episode that you've never seen before. This
this episode's for me. I'm being selfish here, I'm just
saying it's for me. We've always wanted to this gentleman,
this legendary gentleman on our show. As I said at
(03:05):
the top of the show, sometimes this is the joys
of reading. Now I'm credits of getting to know people,
and you know, I will say that this gentleman's work
is highly ubiquitous and in terms of really just being
an important architect in dance culture and in soul culture
(03:26):
and funk culture and disco culture, in bookie culture, in
post bookie culture, of a lot of the bands, a
lot of underground groups that we've danced to throughout the years,
throughout the decades, from Conversion to the Fantastic a Lemes
to Sympho State. Uh, there's log his own Black Ivory
(03:49):
Freak Dazzle.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
Jesus christ, y'all, I can't.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
Believe that we have the one and only Leroy Burges
on Questlove Supreme.
Speaker 4 (03:59):
Yes, sir, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Long time coming. How are you deceived me? Right now?
Speaker 4 (04:05):
Today? Today's the day days, the day aboutely day. This
is the time for it and it's a pleasant and
a joy to be here with you guys. This seems
like it's going to be a lot of fun.
Speaker 3 (04:22):
I could already tell you, like, this is going to
be great because you are actually prepared with your microphone.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
It's clear sound. You know, it's not like.
Speaker 4 (04:32):
I've been in zoom prison before, so you know, I'm
used to it. So it's good to be here. Thank
you for having me, and thank you for your interest
in me and my work. It's pretty cool your legend.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
All right, we're just going to start with the top.
Speaker 3 (04:52):
Always start with this question, levery purchase, what was your
first musical memory in life?
Speaker 4 (04:59):
Okay, that's easy, that's really really easy. My first musical memory,
when I was but an infant, was hearing my mother's voice.
My mother classically trained contralto, and she used to love
to sing, and when I was born, she was singing
and given some of the things that was going on
(05:22):
in the household and during her life, she sang through
those things. You know, any amount of the regular amount
of turmoil that you have in a black family home
in America back in the fifties, right you know? Now, yeah, exactly,
And at that time it was five of us. I
(05:44):
was number four and the fifth was to come. But
I remember her voice, and I remember it being the
most amazing sound and thing for me to latch onto
even before I could speak. My mom let me know
that when I first started learning to speak, I was
singing more than I was speaking. So that's my first
(06:10):
musical memory. My mother's voice.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
Can we say that she's responsible for your your silky falsetto?
Speaker 4 (06:17):
Well, my mother never really got that right. She didn't.
I mean, see, it was okay when Smokey and the
Moments and the dell Phonics would do it and Eddie Kendrickson,
but me, no, she never wanted that for me. Oh,
your natural voice are so beautiful. You should always singing
(06:41):
natural And.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
Wait a minute, but your falsetto is killer.
Speaker 4 (06:47):
Well those were the days, as it was. But she
it took her a minute to get used to that.
And by the time she did, that's when I morphed
into more natural singing and I took the I was
making the transition, taking a hiatus from black ivy and
that old vibe and that old you know, slow jam
(07:09):
thing and moving into my dance period, my my my
disco period, and I made a conscious decision that I
wanted to sing in my natural voice because that's what
was happening. You know, the old James's happening, and Hal
Melvin and the Blue Notes was happening. You wasn't hearing
a lot of uptempo start smoky and moments, you know,
(07:31):
they were still in a slow jam drink. So I
needed to evolve and I felt I felt an energy
pulling me towards a new type of music or what
was happening at that time. So you know, I made
a conscious decision to begin singing in my natural voice,
and surprisingly it's the one that is more most internationally known.
(07:57):
The world embraced it. Lama embraces the full settled thing.
Speaker 3 (08:03):
Could you describe the household like with your siblings and
your parents, Like a lot of our guests, especially kind
of the Northeast based guests, they kind of have the
same narrative where like they might have grown up in
a church household where like secular music's not allowed or
that sort of thing. Just like, what was the general
(08:26):
atmosphere of your family and their musical acceptance.
Speaker 4 (08:30):
Well, my family, like most African descendive families in New
York City and around the country, spiritually based. So yeah,
church was a part of what you had to do right,
what you had to learn you had to learn to
have a relationship with the Almighty and learn who he was.
(08:52):
So that's what they drummed into your head. But what
I liked about it was the music that you heard
in church and Aquia and so forth and so on,
so that locked me into that vibration. Initially, in the
early part of my life, we were five kids, two parents. However,
my biological father, Leroy Jackson Sr. Passed away when I
(09:16):
was six years old, and my mother remarried to Morgan
Burgess shortly after that. So that is why I described
myself as Leroy Burgess as opposed my full name is
Leroy O'Neil Jackson Jr. But I described myself as Leroy
Jackson Burgess because I'm the some result of both fathersts right,
(09:42):
one actually conceived me and the other raised me, so
I'm equal parts of their energy. We had a good health.
We lived in Hollanwriver Projects and I went to PS
ninety about four blocks away. Back in the day, when
you had to walk through four or five feet of snow,
(10:05):
it was unheard of to close the schools on you know.
We a snow day was if it was fifteen feet
that would be a snow day, all right, anything below
fifteen feet, you know you're going to get you behind
the school, get to We had a loving family. My
grandparents were famous for they built small churches up and
(10:30):
down the East coast and they were they were the
family that, oh, no, you can't come in here with
you got to come in here with Jesus that if
you tell them, it's like. But my mom was a
little bit less strict. I mean she took us through church,
Saint Matthew's Baptist Church in our early time. So the spirit,
you know, and being connected to spirituality was always a
(10:53):
part of you know, I connected it directly with music.
They were intertwined to me, so you know. But as
you know, growing up, it was a great time to
grow up. That was back when you know, urban families,
black families, African descended families. We were very tight back
in the sixties and fifties and stuff. I mean, it
(11:13):
was just like a village. We were united in a
lot of ways and we had the support of each
other much more than say today, and that was one
of the things. Being raised in that type of environment
was just extremely cool.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
All right.
Speaker 3 (11:31):
So you mentioned Harlem, so I gotta ask about just
your musical memories of Harlem. Do you have any memories
of like Bobby Robinson's Record Store or any early Apollo
shows that you got to witness.
Speaker 4 (11:47):
I didn't make it to the Apollo until I performed
there when Don't Turn Around came out in nineteen seventy one.
I knew there. I was scared of amateur Night because
I've seen them boo people. If that happened to me,
it would crush me forever. And so the very first
time I performed at the Apollo, it was professionally Don't
(12:10):
Turn Around had come out with Black Ivory. But I
felt like I just missed the music period, you know,
the Billie Holiday and Duke Ellington and Count Basie, when
they was all there. Louis Armstrong, I just missed it.
I can't. I was born in nineteen fifty three, so
by the time I was about four or five or
(12:32):
something like that and could interact with my environment, day
was gone. So but their energy, their energy was still there,
and the type of clubs and the people that they
gravitated to they were still around. And so there was
a music that if you listen closely enough, you could
(12:53):
hear it just butting in the streets in Harlem. You walk,
you know, just walking safe from my hunts fifty first
Street where I lived, to one Hump forty fifth Street
and back. You'd hear all kinds of music coming from
all kinds of places, and some of the coolest stuff,
some jazzy stuff, some of course African influence stuff. Uh.
(13:14):
And it was just I would I would keep those
things in my head and be bopping around like like
I was. You know, everybody thought I was a little
bit crazy, to say nothing of singing in the streets.
I had no problem just bursting in the song, walking along,
I had no problem. So they started to know that
(13:37):
I was the I was. They called me the singer. Oh,
they go to singer.
Speaker 3 (13:42):
So you telling me that at no point as a
five six seven year old, are you ever visiting the
Apollo Theater just to watch the show or to see fall.
Speaker 4 (13:52):
Until I was seventeen, yikes, seventeen. I didn't get to
the Apollo Theater until I was seventeen.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
Can you tell me the first record that you owned
or purchased?
Speaker 4 (14:04):
Yeah, yeah, I can tell you the first. Well, I
didn't the one that I the first one I purchased,
or the first one I got that made a difference.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
All right, So the first record that had an impact
on you, okay, and then the one that you purchased
with your own money.
Speaker 4 (14:19):
But this is a little crazy. The first record that
had an impact on me was a record called Tubby
the Tuba. Right. It was a great musical piece that
definitively described the interaction of the orchestra, right, something that
I used to hear all the time on the Nacing
(14:40):
Cold records and the Johnny Matthis records and so forth,
and so many great orchestras doing this great stuff. And
I was like, oh, what part of that? And so forth.
So this record, Tubby the Tuba, it's a children's story,
but within the story they explained what the string section does,
or they demonstrate what the horn section does and what
the percussion session does and so forth. I was like, oh, wow,
(15:03):
I get it. Now, I get it. So I can
now listen to records and distinguished pull apart the strings,
pull apart the horns, so forth and so on. So
the very first record that influenced me profoundly was Tubby
the Tube.
Speaker 3 (15:18):
So you're getting entertained, You're getting entertained and you're getting
educated right at the same time of how things work.
That's weird because when songs in the Key of Life
came out, uh, when people purchased the album back in
seventy six, Stevie Wonder included like a twenty four page
booklet that had all these album credits in it. You know,
(15:42):
for most black records, you know, liner notes of that
caliber really weren't. They weren't accessible, you know, So my
mom would read those that to me like it was a.
Speaker 4 (15:53):
I read every single word. I was a line of note.
Fool all right. I'll see back in the days with
the Johnny Mathews albums and so forth, and song Mama
would put on the album or they would put on
the album. I was like, give me the give me
the couple, let me read it, let me see who
on the pad? Oh this, who's this person? Who's this person?
And I'm you know, I kept interrupting my mother and
(16:15):
father from listening to the music that they very much
wanted to hear. But I'm like, who is this? But
I loved reading line of notes because it told me
the story of the album. And and you know, it
gave insight the creative process, and I was like, Oh,
what's in arranger? Yeah, what's in a ranger? What did
(16:37):
that guy do? You know? And having the understanding of
what the different orchestral pieces did. I got my appreciation
for what the rhythm pieces did from listening to jazz, right,
and then hearing that base and oh that's an electric
piano or matter an acoustic piano. How cool is that?
(16:58):
This is the this type of style on guitar and
so forth. So I got now I'm making the distinction
between how or Castel works with rhythm and how all
Castle works with jazz, and how the two of them
mess together. So I'm putting on these this is a
little seven year old, six year old brain trying to
(17:18):
put on me stay together right, and when it comes.
I got a lot of information from reading a line
of notes who the songwriter was. These things became important
to me who the songwriter was. That's a great song.
I heard a lot of songs and a lot of
songs though, but this one song, Oh that's great. Who
wrote that?
Speaker 3 (17:37):
Right?
Speaker 4 (17:37):
So playing that kind of attention to it gave me
great insight and great appreciation to the process, you know,
because I needed to understand how to do it.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
The album that you purchased, what was that her?
Speaker 4 (17:54):
Just this is a funny one question. Yeah. Yeah. The
first record you acquired, we acquired, you know what I mean,
the better Wood and uh, I kind of snuck it.
And the first album that I acquired was Abby Road
(18:16):
by the Beatles. Wow, I was a Beatles fan, right,
And my mother sent me to Gimbals.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
What do you know about Gimbals?
Speaker 4 (18:27):
Yeah, yeah, Gimbals, not Macy's Gimbals.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
Gimbals.
Speaker 4 (18:31):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (18:31):
Okay, you talk my language. Okay.
Speaker 4 (18:35):
I was actually I was going to Gimbals and I
was going to the S and H Green Stamp Redemption
Center to get something from the green stamp that the
screen stamps. Yeah. So she my mother had books and
books and books. She had the catalog where she got
every time. So the places up from Rochester. I live
in Harlem, so there's a couple of trains I have
(18:56):
to take and so forth and so on. So I
went up there to get her thing for him. From there,
pick up something from Gimbals, and I had to stop
in the record department, right, And I acquired the Abbey
Road album and I bought it back and I started
(19:16):
playing it incessantly. I played everything incessantly, really, but I
started playing it incessantly, and nobody really asked me where
did that come on? Where did you get that? But
you know, that was the first album I acquired, Now,
the first album I started getting into the way before
(19:38):
that because my mother was a member of check this
out the Columbia record that the sixties.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
Yeah, yeah, eleven, Like what was it back in the day?
Speaker 4 (19:52):
Weel records for a penny, Well for a penny as
long as you you know, buy Mom used to she
knew I loved music, and see, like I said, she's
a singer. So she was like, you know, when I
was good, you know, and I've been you know, not misbehaving,
she would say, okay, well you can buy them. You
(20:13):
can pick out one record of the twelve, or you
can pick out two records of the twelve. So I
used to get Temptations, Stevie Wanda, Uh, the Supremes, Uh,
you know, Jerry Butler with one of my favorite albums
of the Iceman Coming And I used to listen to
those joints. So those were the first things that I
started listening to, uh, in order to discover who my
(20:37):
musical being was Wow.
Speaker 3 (20:44):
Now you mentioned something earlier, and I was gonna let
it slide, but I gotta know because the thing is
is that when you mentioned the S and H green stamps,
probably the only memory that I have of my mother
is my grandmother on my mother's side, is her sitting
(21:04):
at our.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
Table with like thousands and thousands and thousands.
Speaker 3 (21:11):
Of those green what were those green like next to
those green stamps and those like Swedish cookies, you know,
the the butter cookies designs that eventually become their storing
spot for sewing, the Datish cookies that after you finished date,
they become like the sewing kit.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
Sewing kit.
Speaker 3 (21:31):
Yeah, that's that's the woman's crown Royal bag. What were
those what were those S n H stamps for?
Speaker 4 (21:40):
Here's what's up. Basically, you go to the supermarket like
anybody else, right, you buy X amount of grocerites, right
for the money that you spent for those groceries, you
would get X amount of green stamps and they and
they would give you books that you collected stamps on
stick on the page. So for a song. When you
(22:01):
get your books filled up, right, and you know you
had X amount of books. Well, this vacuum cleaner costs
five books and this rewards and just had to get
up there to the S and H Redemption Center and
pick up with some My mom got all of these
(22:23):
nights little because we went. Every time she went food
shopping for the kids, she'd have like one hundred, you know,
and so she you know, I was the designating in
the family to go up there and pick up the
sn H green stamp merchandise.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
I was the counter.
Speaker 3 (22:42):
I would have to count with my she I learned
how to counts. I never knew what they were for.
I was like, I mean, that's that's probably.
Speaker 4 (22:51):
Like they were free stuff, stuff and stuff when it
was good stuff, when it was really really free, right,
They didn't the company needs that supported or that donated
their products to the SNATE factory, you know, for them
to give away. They were advertising for them and promotional
for them. So but you know, I'm coping and you
(23:15):
know stuff that gang.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
Yeah, I realized that half the items of my house
must have came from SNH. So, you know, I told
like some of my friends in luminaries and music heads
that you were coming on the show. I have to say,
you're probably the most connected human being.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
I know because the.
Speaker 3 (23:38):
First response that every music head tells me when I'm like, yo,
we're about to get him on the show, they tell
me like, Yo, you know he's related to Tom Bell?
Speaker 4 (23:46):
Right?
Speaker 1 (23:46):
Yo?
Speaker 3 (23:47):
You know he's related to Archie Belle. Right, Yo, you
know he's related to how.
Speaker 4 (23:51):
Many the bells?
Speaker 5 (23:53):
The bells?
Speaker 2 (23:53):
Huh?
Speaker 3 (23:54):
So you're trying to tell me that Tom and Robert
and Ronald of Cool and Gang and Albet of Stacks
and Archie Bell of it you're all related?
Speaker 2 (24:05):
Yes?
Speaker 4 (24:06):
Wow?
Speaker 2 (24:07):
How come no one has?
Speaker 4 (24:11):
Yeah, I don't know. Listen, we do you do? Well?
He distory with that Patty LaBelle. That's stress common No, no, right,
I thought Patty was the strength, but by Ricky Bell. Yes, okay.
(24:36):
We are all the descendants of an enslaved individual named
Prince Bell from the eighteen twenties and eighteen you know,
eighteen sixties, seventies or something like that. Prince Belle had
a total of three wives. With each of his wedding
(24:57):
wedding units, he made a bunch of kids. Right. Those
kids became my grandparents and my mom and my dad,
and the same as two for Tom Bell or the
Bell brothers. From Cool the Gang, Jerry Bell from the
Dads Band, Uh Bell, Al Bell, Ricky Bell from Bell
(25:20):
Bit devou Tom, I.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
Was only playing that's real, goddamn.
Speaker 4 (25:26):
Outside of the Bell family or Judge Matthis Greg Mathis
is a cousin and the actor Richard Browntree Is, all
of us are descendants of Prince Bell Bell.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
I also heard Betty Right as well.
Speaker 4 (25:41):
Betty Right. I met Betty Right and.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
Are we relatedly working?
Speaker 4 (25:48):
It's we all? Well, I believe that I believe that
I'm related to everybody in the world. I mean, well,
I see why.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
That's crazy.
Speaker 3 (25:57):
Yeah, So shout out to our fire purchase who also,
I mean, you know fire right, hyeh.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
Yeah, okay player, absolutely yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 3 (26:07):
Fire verges who definitely want this episode to happen while
you are connected to everyone.
Speaker 4 (26:13):
So when I think about where, you know, was it
I predestined to enter the music industry, I'm kind of
leaning towards feeling like shit because there's so many loom
nerves in my family that are not just in entertainment
(26:33):
but in music specifically, who have made a definitive monk
on the industry as a whole. So I'm just bringing
up the rear Commons Belding might be real too. I'm
just saying it.
Speaker 3 (26:48):
Was predetermined, like your your future was everyone in your
family has singing talent, and it's push the envelope.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
That's crazy.
Speaker 4 (26:58):
Can I just ask who found who first? When did
y'all know that this was the story behind your family? Yeah,
Calm Bell. Back in my when I was very very young,
Alexander four, five and six and stuff like that, he
used to come to the family picnics down like we
used to have down in Jamesburg, New Jersey. We still
(27:20):
have him in the same place every year. He used
to come and I used to follow him around like
a little public dog, right because he was always talking music.
That was then he stopped coming. Right fift forward to
about somewhere in the nineteen nineties, the Bell the South
Jersey Bell Picnic couldn't happen, so the North Jersey Bell
(27:44):
the Bell Aiken's Picnic happened, and my mother traveled to
that because I was on the road. Right, That's where
my mother met Cools Cool and Robert and Ronald and
all of and Kevin's mother and she was so sing
my sons in the music. Oh so my son he
(28:06):
who's your son black Ibby, who's your son Coonigan? Oh,
we need to do right. So wow. So that's how
they And then a wonderful cousin of mine that I
didn't know. I met her on Facebook. Her name is
Geneva Norman right, and she asked if she was a
(28:27):
cousin and she relaid, and then she presented me with
a document the Bell family history, going all the way
back to Prince Belle right, and it contained every single
everybody in the whole family, including all my brothers, all
my siblings, all my cousins, all you know. It was
(28:51):
just really a definitive document, sixteen page document that told
me who everybody was and where everybody was and so
forth and so on. So uh uh. As I proceeded
through life after finding that out, the last one that
I met officially was Betty uh she was called to
(29:13):
the Lord. When when she was called to her ascension,
I met her. The National R and B Music Society
was giving her a Lifetime Achievement award and uh, I
was you know, I was one at president at that
awards presentation, and I walked over to her after she
(29:34):
got the award and I said, congratulations. Was right by
the way, I'm a descendant of Prince Bell. And she
jumped up and said cousin and hub and and and
so you know things like that. That's been my life
to to uh with Jerry Bell from dazz Man and
(29:58):
formerly of new Birth. He was the lead thing on
new Birth. Yes, I'm performed with.
Speaker 3 (30:03):
New Birth and I believe didn't he eventually join Cool
in the Gang in eighty seven when JT left, Jerry
Bell was the one that sing led a web Yes, yes, yes,
he Oh that explains it. That explains it. That is
(30:25):
what yo, because you don't understand when they made an
album nineteen eighty seven or eighty eight, and you know
JT had left the group and they did an appearance
on Soul Train and Don was trying to put you
and two together, like, wait.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
Where I know you from? Where I know you from?
He said, oh man, that's been and that is wow.
Okay their cousins.
Speaker 4 (30:56):
Yeah, that is crazy.
Speaker 2 (30:59):
Okay, So what's the story long?
Speaker 3 (31:02):
Because I know that the group started when you were
young and your teens and whatnot. How did you meet
with Stuart and Russell, your your bandmates in Black Ivory,
Stuart Bascom and Russell Russell or Patterson.
Speaker 4 (31:16):
We're talking about nineteen sixty eight, and that's when your
family mate, I was fourteen. That's the year that your
mom said, no, you're gonna go out and get You're
gonna get the summer job and get start making your
own money so you can get to you know. So
I got some job and I worked at Saint Charles
Baumeo as a youth counselor. For I was a fourteen
(31:37):
year old taking care of eight year olds.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
You know that kind of thing, right camp, You're the
oldest sibling.
Speaker 4 (31:45):
Oh no, no, no, no no. My eldest sibling is my
sister Vell. He's seventy three and I'm seventy in August.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
Great for seventy bro.
Speaker 4 (31:56):
So I met while I was on you know what.
We were having lunch and shooting bricks, you know what
I mean. But we got a little transits to radio
plane and Here I Go Again by Smokey Robinson and
the Miracles came on and one of my co counselors,
Larry Newkirk, he started singing along with it, and somewhere
(32:21):
halfway between the songs, I started singing along with him,
and at some point he stopped right and just let
me continue singing. And you know, I closed my eyes
and I just continued to singing the song. And then
when I finally opened my eyes, all these people had
gathered around me. Right. So Lavy said, hey, you've got
(32:44):
a beautiful voice. I said you too, and he was like, well,
I got a Google. Are you interested in joining the group?
I said sure? So I went to his house Espinau Gardens,
Humphy seventh and between seventh and Lenox and met the
rest of his group. The Mellow Souls was the name
of the group. About a week later, Uh, the fifth
(33:06):
member of the Mellow Souls, Uh joined Larry Newkirk's group.
So they were five of us, right, and Uh we
started rehearsing and started learning songs. Delpon this moments that
main ingredient. This just started, you know, practicing records. Right,
and Uh, Larry's sister, Gail Newkirk, she was friends with
(33:32):
h They was, you know, boyfriend and girlfriend with Patrick
Adams to come. And so we were already to meet Patrick.
We met over Larry's house and so forth and so on.
Patrick called to say he could not come. Right during
the phone call, I was singing can you remember by
(33:55):
the delphonics right in the background. I was in the
other room, but Patrick heard it and he asked, Lovey,
who is that singing? And Larry was like, that's our
lead singer. And so Patrick called me to the phone
asked me about you know, old blah blah, you know,
where do you learn to sing? And what do you
do to do? And I can't make it today, but
(34:16):
can you meet me next week? And so that a
week later we arranged a meeting with Patrick Adams and
she was enamored with the group, but he couldn't work
with five people. So the first one to leave the
group was Michael Harris in educational pursuits, pursuing his further education.
(34:38):
So that made it a quartet myself, Vito Vermeers, Stuart
Bascombe and Larry Newkirk, and we began being groomed and
developed by Patrick Adams. Right finally they got us. Is
an amazing coincidence, all right. Patrick became friends with gene
(34:59):
Red who was the manager. Now, when coon A Gang
first came out, they were an all instrumental band. There
was no vocals or anything. They just playing came out
and jammed all these soul instrumentals. That was dope, right,
and you know people bought them and dance to them,
and they were quite popular, doing quite well. So Patrick
(35:22):
suggested the gene or vice versa, that, uh, why don't
you let my group permitted themselves and by singing a
couple of songs being backed by a coon a gang.
And they said yes, they said yes. So we were
giving two songs, Love on the Two Way Street and
everybody is a star? Right that coonian and learned to
(35:45):
play behind us to the group. Right now, this is
before we had any idea me and the Bell brothers
that we were related. We I just they were Bells
and I knew that I was the son of a Bell, right.
But uh so that is how black ivy. After a minute, Uh,
(36:12):
Larry Newkirk and Vito rameris left to pursue there further
education and so forth, and so leaving just me and Stuart.
But Larry's brother, Todd Newkirk had was developing a group
to follow behind us, Shades of Mellow. So in that group,
the best singer was Russell Patterson. Okay, so we went
(36:37):
it was just me and Stuart. We went to Russell
and we said, hey, we do be interested in being
were part of this nonsense going on over here.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
You could just steal somebody from their group.
Speaker 4 (36:50):
Yeah, basically, basically we basically stole Russell. That group dissolved,
and that's when Stuart and Patrick got on the phone
with each other and changed the name Mellow Souls as
like hokey as hell, like the mellow who doesn't who
doesn't do that? So Patrick and Stuart got on the
(37:12):
phone and they came up with Ivory, and then black Ivory,
you know, kind of described us because Russell and I
were this complexion and Stuart was light, you know, his
light skin brother. So that puts you in mind of
the piano and piano keys and all of that. And so.
Speaker 2 (37:32):
That's why y'all named y'allselves Black Ivory.
Speaker 3 (37:35):
Oh wow, that's the best colorism story I've heard actually,
speaking of which I didn't even plan this moment, but
right at this moment, I'm watching you guys on socialet. Yo,
your your afro is highly highly impressive.
Speaker 4 (37:57):
Wow, oh my god. First of all, I gotta I gotta,
I gotta say you are the only person with that footage. Oh,
I know in the world.
Speaker 2 (38:12):
I realized this.
Speaker 3 (38:12):
I'm we have can I can I explain to you
why I have this footage? But you guys can take
a wild guess why have his footage?
Speaker 4 (38:19):
But we've been I've been looking. I've been looking for
that footage, to see that skill, that one performance. No,
what goes around comes around.
Speaker 3 (38:29):
Yeah, obviously I'm working on a project, and you know
I keep the show on. Even if I weren't working
on it, I'd be watching all eleven hundred episodes of
the Soul Track like it.
Speaker 2 (38:41):
This is always stays on, no matter what. It's like
my aquarium.
Speaker 4 (38:45):
You don't know how crucial. We have been looking for
this that footage for over forty years, Right over forty years.
The Soul Train compilations came out. One episode, Oh this
missing Black Cobby and Hugh Methon.
Speaker 2 (39:03):
You messe Quila and from Chicago, Don's homeboy what's his name?
Speaker 4 (39:10):
You have the interview where Don don canille I not
the all over my stage and I said, well I
couldn't help it.
Speaker 2 (39:19):
The mud up.
Speaker 4 (39:21):
Oh my god, I got you back over there. I
wanted to walk back over there. Let me see.
Speaker 3 (39:33):
Can you basically talk about Patrick adams likes as a
record collector and especially Perception Records, you know, I know,
I always knew it as a jazz label, like I know,
like some of the funkier Disney Gillespie stuff and you know,
well also fat Back.
Speaker 2 (39:49):
But like James Moody, like a lot of jazz artists like.
Speaker 3 (39:53):
Weren't It wasn't Perception primarily a jazz label.
Speaker 4 (39:56):
It wasn't entirely a jazz label U And they were
breaking into R and B and other marketplaces, which is
why they found a place for Patrick because he was
the voice of Harlem coming from the R and B
side of things, and that's why he ended up being
an art director. But yeah, when we went to the label,
(40:19):
it had Johnny Hartman was one of the artists on
the oh Johnny Hartman. It was Dizzy Gi Leslie. He
was on the label. But they had they had they
hadn't really broken up the Today label. We were the
ones to really break that label open Today. Yeah, Patrick
(40:42):
was He became my absolute mentor and the guy who
allowed me and and supported me and getting my focus
together to become whatever I would become in the industry.
Speaker 3 (40:57):
So basically you're watching him in the skideo and this
is how you're getting your education.
Speaker 4 (41:02):
Or I'm stealing and everything. I could steal every little part,
and I was like, how did you do that? And
how did you? And he loved He loved working with
me because he loved the idea that I could come
up with on my own. You and I was my
first composition commercial composition. Wow. I wrote that when I
(41:23):
was sixteen years old, and Stuart came in and did
the lyrics to it. Patrick loved it because I didn't
even know that I was using two four timing and
six four timing, and so I would just like playing
something that I liked. But You was like, oh, that's
so great, and we're going to do a record, and
we did this seven minute epic yes of You and I.
Speaker 2 (41:45):
You and I?
Speaker 4 (41:46):
Right, that the thing for everybody to have. But so
Patrick is entirely responsible for introducing me and bringing me
into the the music industry. I can say that unequivocally.
There's no one more was Patrick. Was he a white guy,
(42:06):
black guy? I've seen pictures of him, He's black.
Speaker 2 (42:10):
Okay. For for our listeners out there that are hip hop.
Speaker 3 (42:15):
Heads, you and ize the sample to uh Q tips
getting up right?
Speaker 4 (42:20):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (42:22):
Getting up?
Speaker 4 (42:23):
Was that?
Speaker 2 (42:24):
Was that shocking?
Speaker 3 (42:24):
For you to hear it have somewhat of a resurrection
of sorts.
Speaker 4 (42:30):
Q Q tip is just a really cool bubble. He's
just straight up above board, all right. And what happened was,
I was working for working at Manny's Music on forty
eighth Street for a little while, you know me, and yes,
you get actually came in and sort me out right
and said, I want to I'm thinking about using you
(42:54):
and I for you know what, for this new song,
and uh, I want to do it the right way.
So I knew I found out that you were working here, right,
you put me onto your publishers so that we can
work out a licensing deal, right, And I always respected
him for doing that because there's so many underhanded ways
(43:18):
you can you know, you know, decided to have the
integrity to come straight at it and to do the
right thing. And I always respected Kamal for that. But yeah,
he actually did the right thing by us.
Speaker 3 (43:33):
So by putting two and two together, can I assume
that you guys' decision to record Don't turn Around and
Philadelphia Sigma Sound had to do with your cousin also
working out of there.
Speaker 4 (43:49):
Boll Patrick and Tom Bell had a rivalry to you know,
it was New York versus Philly. Tom Bell was the
one of the leading had lists of the Philadelphia Sound.
They became friends, so forth and so on. They knew
each other professionally, and Patrick was always trying to create
(44:09):
great records and great songs like don't Turn Around. When
he became the the vice president of the and r
AT at Perception Today, they gave him the budget to
go to Philly and use I think we use half
of MSSB.
Speaker 3 (44:29):
Yeah, Norman Harrison, Vince Montana like all the cats, right.
Speaker 4 (44:33):
And the dudes. The other half of the band, of
the rhythm band was Willie Feasta and the Mighty Magnificence
right all right, which was the all platinum Stang Records.
Speaker 2 (44:44):
Yes, the Sylvie Robinson Crew, Right.
Speaker 4 (44:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (44:47):
So I was gonna ask how did you manage?
Speaker 3 (44:48):
Because when I read read the album credits, I'm like,
wait a minute, is this all just a tri state
thing or like we're because I think for a lot
of us, when we think of the Philly sound, we
literally think that everything is going through gamble and huff
and it really wasn't until one day Joe Tarcia told me, like, no,
like you know, there's a period where even the ms
(45:13):
MFSB Cats broke away from Gamble and Heff as session
musicians and decided to produce themselves. But since they recorded
at Sigma, you know, it all sounded the same because
of the of you know.
Speaker 2 (45:26):
The equipment they used and.
Speaker 4 (45:28):
So yeah, just the style of the music there they
all do.
Speaker 3 (45:32):
Right, So people didn't feel a certain way, like I
would think that like Gamble and Huff would feel a
certain way if you know Dexter Wanzel or or or
or Vince or whoever is like at the Helm or
even your cousin, Like, it all sounds the same because
it's the same musicians, the same engineering, the same studio,
(45:53):
the same instruments. So I'm just thinking, like this is
all going through Gamble and Huff, but cats feel a
certain way about like.
Speaker 4 (46:02):
Well, here's my best answer to that. It began as
a partnership Gamble, Huff and Bell, all right, the three
of them were together. That's where you get mighty three
music and so forth.
Speaker 3 (46:17):
Okay, I didn't realize that Bell was like a part
of their I just thought he was like way I
used the studio as well. I didn't realize that he
was see where Mighty three came.
Speaker 4 (46:27):
From an integral part of the Gamble when they always
in their twenties and stuff like that. They were together, right.
The Iceman comings with an album produced by Gambling, Huff
and Belle. Okay, one of my favorite songs, are You Happy,
completely arranged by Bobby Martin and Tom Bell. All right,
(46:49):
So they were always connected. And then as music evolved,
they became Kenny and Leon, and then Tom Bell went
off and did his delphonics thing, right, while Kenny and
Leon did the intruders, and you know that became the
early Old Jays and so forth and so on so
and next thing, you know, Tom Bell is doing on
(47:12):
the spinners, and you know that whole that whole sphere.
But yes, indeed, every time they went into the studio,
whether it was Gambling, Huff or Tom Bell, they used
the same musician Norman Harris, Earl Young on drums all
the time, Vince Montana. They were the same cats, and
(47:33):
they all had this light style of composition, right Whereas
Gambling the songs that they wrote were similar. They came
from the kind of the same place, right, and then
using the same musicians to realize these songs create that
specific sound, the Phil Lee sound right, which can come
(47:55):
from either Gambling Huff or Tom Bell and later on
Dexter One, Hell, Whitehead so Forth and Offshoots, Uh, Norman Habits, Baker,
Habits Young so Forth and so on. In the Vince
Montana camp, they were all United and Sigma Sound Studios,
and they would call each other up for the babous sessions.
(48:18):
So that's why all the records started sounding like each other.
Speaker 2 (48:24):
Thank you for finally saying that I just never.
Speaker 4 (48:27):
Knew right and talk to all of them. Sorry, I'm
sorry now.
Speaker 5 (48:31):
I was gonna ask before we got off the first album.
I keep asking questions, Yeah, uh, how how did it
feel when you heard that, you know, being used in
that way for Criminology?
Speaker 4 (48:48):
Same story as come on, Yeah, I don't think so.
Speaker 1 (48:53):
Or no or no I heard.
Speaker 4 (48:57):
I'm like, all right, I don't think it's gonna be
the same.
Speaker 3 (48:59):
I can't wait to get to over like a fat rat.
Speaker 2 (49:04):
This is all like after the fact.
Speaker 4 (49:08):
I didn't know about Criminology until way after it came out.
Was successful, right, And my first response was the old
R and B head Right, this rap is taken over right.
I don't know what are they saying to the kids,
(49:30):
and some of them I went with the t on them.
But then it was doing so well, and then it
went gold and then it went platinum. I might be
okay with this. I might just be okay this, And
(49:53):
I actually am looking at the platinum black right there
only built only for Cuban links.
Speaker 2 (50:00):
Yeah, I was gonna say for a lot of us.
Speaker 3 (50:02):
I mean, yeah, my dad had your records, but it
is those records that made us.
Speaker 2 (50:10):
Really truly like revisit those.
Speaker 3 (50:13):
Records and look down the credits and then just really
get lost in your history. So I know in the
beginning it's a little jarring because you're like, my work's
being torn apart or whatever, but you know that if
there ever was an album for you to be associated with,
(50:35):
that was the record.
Speaker 4 (50:38):
That started a trend, and a trend that begun earlier
by I think it was remember Strictly Business, that movie
Barry Grandpa, but he took fat lap, he used over
like a fat vat.
Speaker 2 (50:56):
Yeah, I was.
Speaker 4 (50:59):
I was not cool. Within July saw the first chat
and then I realized, yeah.
Speaker 2 (51:10):
Hey, everybody, what's up. This is Fonte from Team Supreme.
This interview was so good so nice.
Speaker 4 (51:16):
We had to do it twice.
Speaker 5 (51:17):
We put it up, put it, broke it up into
two parts. Honestly, this was one of my favorite interviews
this season. I wanted to talk to Leroy for a
long time and he did not disappoint. So please check
back in as Leroy tells us more about his life
and career.
Speaker 4 (51:30):
Peace Shall.
Speaker 1 (51:42):
What's Lop Supreme is a production of iHeart Radio. For
more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
West Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio, Ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
This is West Love Supreme.
Speaker 3 (00:11):
I'm giving you, guys fear of warning now that if
you ever complained about my inside baseball.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Method of interviewing Ben, You're not going to be any
happier with this physical episode. However, if you.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
Are a music head and you know your music, and
you know your album credit, and you know your.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Producers and your legends, love this episode.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
First of all, we were just complaining that, you know,
after doing those.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Four shows together and.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Back in prison again soon counch prison.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
I'm saying.
Speaker 4 (00:55):
You trapped in the sixties.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
I was about to say, France, you're you're currently right now,
you're back in North Carolina.
Speaker 4 (01:05):
No, I'm this is not prison for me.
Speaker 5 (01:07):
I'm actually doing quite well.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
He actually made it quite clear that you know, this
is he's living the dream right now.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Is.
Speaker 4 (01:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (01:19):
Man, But you know, but but this was an episode
I really did wish we could have done in personal.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
God, if we would have done this in person, this
episode will probably be seven hours.
Speaker 4 (01:29):
Right.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
You know what I'm saying, You're looking well and clear today,
like you you got to share your secret. I worked
out and took a shower. Okay, something like it's fresh.
Speaker 4 (01:44):
You know what I'm saying?
Speaker 3 (01:44):
Like, Bill, our two friends in the corner, you know,
am I looking well?
Speaker 4 (01:51):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Man, you look you look awesome, Steve.
Speaker 4 (01:53):
I put on some brown coconut oils for you for
the show.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
That's what's up, man, That's what's up?
Speaker 4 (01:59):
Bill?
Speaker 2 (02:00):
How you doing? So?
Speaker 3 (02:02):
You really missed an important episode with Angie Martinez.
Speaker 4 (02:05):
By the way, Oh my god?
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Why we took it back to the old school.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
I feel like we should only do the in persons,
and we should only do them in certain ways.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
And I miss them already and it's been days. Hey man,
all right? Also, I just like hugging Fonte. I haven't
it was great? Man, my microdve supreme. That'll be the
I have to revitalize myself anyway. Continue. Yeah, so, ladies
and gentlemen, I will say that.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
This I sound like a broken record. This episode has
been a long time coming.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
This is I.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
Feel like the forty fifth president when he ever does
those like meaningless you know you're about to see the
likes of an episode that you've never seen before. This
this episode's for me. I'm being selfish here, I'm just
saying it's for me. We've always wanted to this gentleman,
this legendary gentleman on our show. As I said at
(03:05):
the top of the show, sometimes this is the joys
of reading. Now I'm credits of getting to know people,
and you know, I will say that this gentleman's work
is highly ubiquitous and in terms of really just being
an important architect in dance culture and in soul culture
(03:26):
and funk culture and disco culture, in bookie culture, in
post bookie culture, of a lot of the bands, a
lot of underground groups that we've danced to throughout the years,
throughout the decades, from Conversion to the Fantastic a Lemes
to Sympho State. Uh, there's log his own Black Ivory
(03:49):
Freak Dazzle.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
Jesus christ, y'all, I can't.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
Believe that we have the one and only Leroy Burges
on Questlove Supreme.
Speaker 4 (03:59):
Yes, sir, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Long time coming. How are you deceived me? Right now?
Speaker 4 (04:05):
Today? Today's the day days, the day aboutely day. This
is the time for it and it's a pleasant and
a joy to be here with you guys. This seems
like it's going to be a lot of fun.
Speaker 3 (04:22):
I could already tell you, like, this is going to
be great because you are actually prepared with your microphone.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
It's clear sound. You know, it's not like.
Speaker 4 (04:32):
I've been in zoom prison before, so you know, I'm
used to it. So it's good to be here. Thank
you for having me, and thank you for your interest
in me and my work. It's pretty cool your legend.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
All right, we're just going to start with the top.
Speaker 3 (04:52):
Always start with this question, levery purchase, what was your
first musical memory in life?
Speaker 4 (04:59):
Okay, that's easy, that's really really easy. My first musical memory,
when I was but an infant, was hearing my mother's voice.
My mother classically trained contralto, and she used to love
to sing, and when I was born, she was singing
and given some of the things that was going on
(05:22):
in the household and during her life, she sang through
those things. You know, any amount of the regular amount
of turmoil that you have in a black family home
in America back in the fifties, right you know? Now, yeah, exactly,
And at that time it was five of us. I
(05:44):
was number four and the fifth was to come. But
I remember her voice, and I remember it being the
most amazing sound and thing for me to latch onto
even before I could speak. My mom let me know
that when I first started learning to speak, I was
singing more than I was speaking. So that's my first
(06:10):
musical memory. My mother's voice.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
Can we say that she's responsible for your your silky falsetto?
Speaker 4 (06:17):
Well, my mother never really got that right. She didn't.
I mean, see, it was okay when Smokey and the
Moments and the dell Phonics would do it and Eddie Kendrickson,
but me, no, she never wanted that for me. Oh,
your natural voice are so beautiful. You should always singing
(06:41):
natural And.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
Wait a minute, but your falsetto is killer.
Speaker 4 (06:47):
Well those were the days, as it was. But she
it took her a minute to get used to that.
And by the time she did, that's when I morphed
into more natural singing and I took the I was
making the transition, taking a hiatus from black ivy and
that old vibe and that old you know, slow jam
(07:09):
thing and moving into my dance period, my my my
disco period, and I made a conscious decision that I
wanted to sing in my natural voice because that's what
was happening. You know, the old James's happening, and Hal
Melvin and the Blue Notes was happening. You wasn't hearing
a lot of uptempo start smoky and moments, you know,
(07:31):
they were still in a slow jam drink. So I
needed to evolve and I felt I felt an energy
pulling me towards a new type of music or what
was happening at that time. So you know, I made
a conscious decision to begin singing in my natural voice,
and surprisingly it's the one that is more most internationally known.
(07:57):
The world embraced it. Lama embraces the full settled thing.
Speaker 3 (08:03):
Could you describe the household like with your siblings and
your parents, Like a lot of our guests, especially kind
of the Northeast based guests, they kind of have the
same narrative where like they might have grown up in
a church household where like secular music's not allowed or
that sort of thing. Just like, what was the general
(08:26):
atmosphere of your family and their musical acceptance.
Speaker 4 (08:30):
Well, my family, like most African descendive families in New
York City and around the country, spiritually based. So yeah,
church was a part of what you had to do right,
what you had to learn you had to learn to
have a relationship with the Almighty and learn who he was.
(08:52):
So that's what they drummed into your head. But what
I liked about it was the music that you heard
in church and Aquia and so forth and so on,
so that locked me into that vibration. Initially, in the
early part of my life, we were five kids, two parents. However,
my biological father, Leroy Jackson Sr. Passed away when I
(09:16):
was six years old, and my mother remarried to Morgan
Burgess shortly after that. So that is why I described
myself as Leroy Burgess as opposed my full name is
Leroy O'Neil Jackson Jr. But I described myself as Leroy
Jackson Burgess because I'm the some result of both fathersts right,
(09:42):
one actually conceived me and the other raised me, so
I'm equal parts of their energy. We had a good health.
We lived in Hollanwriver Projects and I went to PS
ninety about four blocks away. Back in the day, when
you had to walk through four or five feet of snow,
(10:05):
it was unheard of to close the schools on you know.
We a snow day was if it was fifteen feet
that would be a snow day, all right, anything below
fifteen feet, you know you're going to get you behind
the school, get to We had a loving family. My
grandparents were famous for they built small churches up and
(10:30):
down the East coast and they were they were the
family that, oh, no, you can't come in here with
you got to come in here with Jesus that if
you tell them, it's like. But my mom was a
little bit less strict. I mean she took us through church,
Saint Matthew's Baptist Church in our early time. So the spirit,
you know, and being connected to spirituality was always a
(10:53):
part of you know, I connected it directly with music.
They were intertwined to me, so you know. But as
you know, growing up, it was a great time to
grow up. That was back when you know, urban families,
black families, African descended families. We were very tight back
in the sixties and fifties and stuff. I mean, it
(11:13):
was just like a village. We were united in a
lot of ways and we had the support of each
other much more than say today, and that was one
of the things. Being raised in that type of environment
was just extremely cool.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
All right.
Speaker 3 (11:31):
So you mentioned Harlem, so I gotta ask about just
your musical memories of Harlem. Do you have any memories
of like Bobby Robinson's Record Store or any early Apollo
shows that you got to witness.
Speaker 4 (11:47):
I didn't make it to the Apollo until I performed
there when Don't Turn Around came out in nineteen seventy one.
I knew there. I was scared of amateur Night because
I've seen them boo people. If that happened to me,
it would crush me forever. And so the very first
time I performed at the Apollo, it was professionally Don't
(12:10):
Turn Around had come out with Black Ivory. But I
felt like I just missed the music period, you know,
the Billie Holiday and Duke Ellington and Count Basie, when
they was all there. Louis Armstrong, I just missed it.
I can't. I was born in nineteen fifty three, so
by the time I was about four or five or
(12:32):
something like that and could interact with my environment, day
was gone. So but their energy, their energy was still there,
and the type of clubs and the people that they
gravitated to they were still around. And so there was
a music that if you listen closely enough, you could
(12:53):
hear it just butting in the streets in Harlem. You walk,
you know, just walking safe from my hunts fifty first
Street where I lived, to one Hump forty fifth Street
and back. You'd hear all kinds of music coming from
all kinds of places, and some of the coolest stuff,
some jazzy stuff, some of course African influence stuff. Uh.
(13:14):
And it was just I would I would keep those
things in my head and be bopping around like like
I was. You know, everybody thought I was a little
bit crazy, to say nothing of singing in the streets.
I had no problem just bursting in the song, walking along,
I had no problem. So they started to know that
(13:37):
I was the I was. They called me the singer. Oh,
they go to singer.
Speaker 3 (13:42):
So you telling me that at no point as a
five six seven year old, are you ever visiting the
Apollo Theater just to watch the show or to see fall.
Speaker 4 (13:52):
Until I was seventeen, yikes, seventeen. I didn't get to
the Apollo Theater until I was seventeen.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
Can you tell me the first record that you owned
or purchased?
Speaker 4 (14:04):
Yeah, yeah, I can tell you the first. Well, I
didn't the one that I the first one I purchased,
or the first one I got that made a difference.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
All right, So the first record that had an impact
on you, okay, and then the one that you purchased
with your own money.
Speaker 4 (14:19):
But this is a little crazy. The first record that
had an impact on me was a record called Tubby
the Tuba. Right. It was a great musical piece that
definitively described the interaction of the orchestra, right, something that
I used to hear all the time on the Nacing
(14:40):
Cold records and the Johnny Matthis records and so forth,
and so many great orchestras doing this great stuff. And
I was like, oh, what part of that? And so forth.
So this record, Tubby the Tuba, it's a children's story,
but within the story they explained what the string section does,
or they demonstrate what the horn section does and what
the percussion session does and so forth. I was like, oh, wow,
(15:03):
I get it. Now, I get it. So I can
now listen to records and distinguished pull apart the strings,
pull apart the horns, so forth and so on. So
the very first record that influenced me profoundly was Tubby
the Tube.
Speaker 3 (15:18):
So you're getting entertained, You're getting entertained and you're getting
educated right at the same time of how things work.
That's weird because when songs in the Key of Life
came out, uh, when people purchased the album back in
seventy six, Stevie Wonder included like a twenty four page
booklet that had all these album credits in it. You know,
(15:42):
for most black records, you know, liner notes of that
caliber really weren't. They weren't accessible, you know, So my
mom would read those that to me like it was a.
Speaker 4 (15:53):
I read every single word. I was a line of note.
Fool all right. I'll see back in the days with
the Johnny Mathews albums and so forth, and song Mama
would put on the album or they would put on
the album. I was like, give me the give me
the couple, let me read it, let me see who
on the pad? Oh this, who's this person? Who's this person?
And I'm you know, I kept interrupting my mother and
(16:15):
father from listening to the music that they very much
wanted to hear. But I'm like, who is this? But
I loved reading line of notes because it told me
the story of the album. And and you know, it
gave insight the creative process, and I was like, Oh,
what's in arranger? Yeah, what's in a ranger? What did
(16:37):
that guy do? You know? And having the understanding of
what the different orchestral pieces did. I got my appreciation
for what the rhythm pieces did from listening to jazz, right,
and then hearing that base and oh that's an electric
piano or matter an acoustic piano. How cool is that?
(16:58):
This is the this type of style on guitar and
so forth. So I got now I'm making the distinction
between how or Castel works with rhythm and how all
Castle works with jazz, and how the two of them
mess together. So I'm putting on these this is a
little seven year old, six year old brain trying to
(17:18):
put on me stay together right, and when it comes.
I got a lot of information from reading a line
of notes who the songwriter was. These things became important
to me who the songwriter was. That's a great song.
I heard a lot of songs and a lot of
songs though, but this one song, Oh that's great. Who
wrote that?
Speaker 3 (17:37):
Right?
Speaker 4 (17:37):
So playing that kind of attention to it gave me
great insight and great appreciation to the process, you know,
because I needed to understand how to do it.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
The album that you purchased, what was that her?
Speaker 4 (17:54):
Just this is a funny one question. Yeah. Yeah. The
first record you acquired, we acquired, you know what I mean,
the better Wood and uh, I kind of snuck it.
And the first album that I acquired was Abby Road
(18:16):
by the Beatles. Wow, I was a Beatles fan, right,
And my mother sent me to Gimbals.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
What do you know about Gimbals?
Speaker 4 (18:27):
Yeah, yeah, Gimbals, not Macy's Gimbals.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
Gimbals.
Speaker 4 (18:31):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (18:31):
Okay, you talk my language. Okay.
Speaker 4 (18:35):
I was actually I was going to Gimbals and I
was going to the S and H Green Stamp Redemption
Center to get something from the green stamp that the
screen stamps. Yeah. So she my mother had books and
books and books. She had the catalog where she got
every time. So the places up from Rochester. I live
in Harlem, so there's a couple of trains I have
(18:56):
to take and so forth and so on. So I
went up there to get her thing for him. From there,
pick up something from Gimbals, and I had to stop
in the record department, right, And I acquired the Abbey
Road album and I bought it back and I started
(19:16):
playing it incessantly. I played everything incessantly, really, but I
started playing it incessantly, and nobody really asked me where
did that come on? Where did you get that? But
you know, that was the first album I acquired, Now,
the first album I started getting into the way before
(19:38):
that because my mother was a member of check this
out the Columbia record that the sixties.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
Yeah, yeah, eleven, Like what was it back in the day?
Speaker 4 (19:52):
Weel records for a penny, Well for a penny as
long as you you know, buy Mom used to she
knew I loved music, and see, like I said, she's
a singer. So she was like, you know, when I
was good, you know, and I've been you know, not misbehaving,
she would say, okay, well you can buy them. You
(20:13):
can pick out one record of the twelve, or you
can pick out two records of the twelve. So I
used to get Temptations, Stevie Wanda, Uh, the Supremes, Uh,
you know, Jerry Butler with one of my favorite albums
of the Iceman Coming And I used to listen to
those joints. So those were the first things that I
started listening to, uh, in order to discover who my
(20:37):
musical being was Wow.
Speaker 3 (20:44):
Now you mentioned something earlier, and I was gonna let
it slide, but I gotta know because the thing is
is that when you mentioned the S and H green stamps,
probably the only memory that I have of my mother
is my grandmother on my mother's side, is her sitting
(21:04):
at our.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
Table with like thousands and thousands and thousands.
Speaker 3 (21:11):
Of those green what were those green like next to
those green stamps and those like Swedish cookies, you know,
the the butter cookies designs that eventually become their storing
spot for sewing, the Datish cookies that after you finished date,
they become like the sewing kit.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
Sewing kit.
Speaker 3 (21:31):
Yeah, that's that's the woman's crown Royal bag. What were
those what were those S n H stamps for?
Speaker 4 (21:40):
Here's what's up. Basically, you go to the supermarket like
anybody else, right, you buy X amount of grocerites, right
for the money that you spent for those groceries, you
would get X amount of green stamps and they and
they would give you books that you collected stamps on
stick on the page. So for a song. When you
(22:01):
get your books filled up, right, and you know you
had X amount of books. Well, this vacuum cleaner costs
five books and this rewards and just had to get
up there to the S and H Redemption Center and
pick up with some My mom got all of these
(22:23):
nights little because we went. Every time she went food
shopping for the kids, she'd have like one hundred, you know,
and so she you know, I was the designating in
the family to go up there and pick up the
sn H green stamp merchandise.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
I was the counter.
Speaker 3 (22:42):
I would have to count with my she I learned
how to counts. I never knew what they were for.
I was like, I mean, that's that's probably.
Speaker 4 (22:51):
Like they were free stuff, stuff and stuff when it
was good stuff, when it was really really free, right,
They didn't the company needs that supported or that donated
their products to the SNATE factory, you know, for them
to give away. They were advertising for them and promotional
for them. So but you know, I'm coping and you
(23:15):
know stuff that gang.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
Yeah, I realized that half the items of my house
must have came from SNH. So, you know, I told
like some of my friends in luminaries and music heads
that you were coming on the show. I have to say,
you're probably the most connected human being.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
I know because the.
Speaker 3 (23:38):
First response that every music head tells me when I'm like, yo,
we're about to get him on the show, they tell
me like, Yo, you know he's related to Tom Bell?
Speaker 4 (23:46):
Right?
Speaker 1 (23:46):
Yo?
Speaker 3 (23:47):
You know he's related to Archie Belle. Right, Yo, you
know he's related to how.
Speaker 4 (23:51):
Many the bells?
Speaker 5 (23:53):
The bells?
Speaker 2 (23:53):
Huh?
Speaker 3 (23:54):
So you're trying to tell me that Tom and Robert
and Ronald of Cool and Gang and Albet of Stacks
and Archie Bell of it you're all related?
Speaker 2 (24:05):
Yes?
Speaker 4 (24:06):
Wow?
Speaker 2 (24:07):
How come no one has?
Speaker 4 (24:11):
Yeah, I don't know. Listen, we do you do? Well?
He distory with that Patty LaBelle. That's stress common No, no, right,
I thought Patty was the strength, but by Ricky Bell. Yes, okay.
(24:36):
We are all the descendants of an enslaved individual named
Prince Bell from the eighteen twenties and eighteen you know,
eighteen sixties, seventies or something like that. Prince Belle had
a total of three wives. With each of his wedding
(24:57):
wedding units, he made a bunch of kids. Right. Those
kids became my grandparents and my mom and my dad,
and the same as two for Tom Bell or the
Bell brothers. From Cool the Gang, Jerry Bell from the
Dads Band, Uh Bell, Al Bell, Ricky Bell from Bell
(25:20):
Bit devou Tom, I.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
Was only playing that's real, goddamn.
Speaker 4 (25:26):
Outside of the Bell family or Judge Matthis Greg Mathis
is a cousin and the actor Richard Browntree Is, all
of us are descendants of Prince Bell Bell.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
I also heard Betty Right as well.
Speaker 4 (25:41):
Betty Right. I met Betty Right and.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
Are we relatedly working?
Speaker 4 (25:48):
It's we all? Well, I believe that I believe that
I'm related to everybody in the world. I mean, well,
I see why.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
That's crazy.
Speaker 3 (25:57):
Yeah, So shout out to our fire purchase who also,
I mean, you know fire right, hyeh.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
Yeah, okay player, absolutely yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 3 (26:07):
Fire verges who definitely want this episode to happen while
you are connected to everyone.
Speaker 4 (26:13):
So when I think about where, you know, was it
I predestined to enter the music industry, I'm kind of
leaning towards feeling like shit because there's so many loom
nerves in my family that are not just in entertainment
(26:33):
but in music specifically, who have made a definitive monk
on the industry as a whole. So I'm just bringing
up the rear Commons Belding might be real too. I'm
just saying it.
Speaker 3 (26:48):
Was predetermined, like your your future was everyone in your
family has singing talent, and it's push the envelope.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
That's crazy.
Speaker 4 (26:58):
Can I just ask who found who first? When did
y'all know that this was the story behind your family? Yeah,
Calm Bell. Back in my when I was very very young,
Alexander four, five and six and stuff like that, he
used to come to the family picnics down like we
used to have down in Jamesburg, New Jersey. We still
(27:20):
have him in the same place every year. He used
to come and I used to follow him around like
a little public dog, right because he was always talking music.
That was then he stopped coming. Right fift forward to
about somewhere in the nineteen nineties, the Bell the South
Jersey Bell Picnic couldn't happen, so the North Jersey Bell
(27:44):
the Bell Aiken's Picnic happened, and my mother traveled to
that because I was on the road. Right, That's where
my mother met Cools Cool and Robert and Ronald and
all of and Kevin's mother and she was so sing
my sons in the music. Oh so my son he
(28:06):
who's your son black Ibby, who's your son Coonigan? Oh,
we need to do right. So wow. So that's how
they And then a wonderful cousin of mine that I
didn't know. I met her on Facebook. Her name is
Geneva Norman right, and she asked if she was a
(28:27):
cousin and she relaid, and then she presented me with
a document the Bell family history, going all the way
back to Prince Belle right, and it contained every single
everybody in the whole family, including all my brothers, all
my siblings, all my cousins, all you know. It was
(28:51):
just really a definitive document, sixteen page document that told
me who everybody was and where everybody was and so
forth and so on. So uh uh. As I proceeded
through life after finding that out, the last one that
I met officially was Betty uh she was called to
(29:13):
the Lord. When when she was called to her ascension,
I met her. The National R and B Music Society
was giving her a Lifetime Achievement award and uh, I
was you know, I was one at president at that
awards presentation, and I walked over to her after she
(29:34):
got the award and I said, congratulations. Was right by
the way, I'm a descendant of Prince Bell. And she
jumped up and said cousin and hub and and and
so you know things like that. That's been my life
to to uh with Jerry Bell from dazz Man and
(29:58):
formerly of new Birth. He was the lead thing on
new Birth. Yes, I'm performed with.
Speaker 3 (30:03):
New Birth and I believe didn't he eventually join Cool
in the Gang in eighty seven when JT left, Jerry
Bell was the one that sing led a web Yes, yes, yes,
he Oh that explains it. That explains it. That is
(30:25):
what yo, because you don't understand when they made an
album nineteen eighty seven or eighty eight, and you know
JT had left the group and they did an appearance
on Soul Train and Don was trying to put you
and two together, like, wait.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
Where I know you from? Where I know you from?
He said, oh man, that's been and that is wow.
Okay their cousins.
Speaker 4 (30:56):
Yeah, that is crazy.
Speaker 2 (30:59):
Okay, So what's the story long?
Speaker 3 (31:02):
Because I know that the group started when you were
young and your teens and whatnot. How did you meet
with Stuart and Russell, your your bandmates in Black Ivory,
Stuart Bascom and Russell Russell or Patterson.
Speaker 4 (31:16):
We're talking about nineteen sixty eight, and that's when your
family mate, I was fourteen. That's the year that your
mom said, no, you're gonna go out and get You're
gonna get the summer job and get start making your
own money so you can get to you know. So
I got some job and I worked at Saint Charles
Baumeo as a youth counselor. For I was a fourteen
(31:37):
year old taking care of eight year olds.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
You know that kind of thing, right camp, You're the
oldest sibling.
Speaker 4 (31:45):
Oh no, no, no, no no. My eldest sibling is my
sister Vell. He's seventy three and I'm seventy in August.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
Great for seventy bro.
Speaker 4 (31:56):
So I met while I was on you know what.
We were having lunch and shooting bricks, you know what
I mean. But we got a little transits to radio
plane and Here I Go Again by Smokey Robinson and
the Miracles came on and one of my co counselors,
Larry Newkirk, he started singing along with it, and somewhere
(32:21):
halfway between the songs, I started singing along with him,
and at some point he stopped right and just let
me continue singing. And you know, I closed my eyes
and I just continued to singing the song. And then
when I finally opened my eyes, all these people had
gathered around me. Right. So Lavy said, hey, you've got
(32:44):
a beautiful voice. I said you too, and he was like, well,
I got a Google. Are you interested in joining the group?
I said sure? So I went to his house Espinau Gardens,
Humphy seventh and between seventh and Lenox and met the
rest of his group. The Mellow Souls was the name
of the group. About a week later, Uh, the fifth
(33:06):
member of the Mellow Souls, Uh joined Larry Newkirk's group.
So they were five of us, right, and Uh we
started rehearsing and started learning songs. Delpon this moments that
main ingredient. This just started, you know, practicing records. Right,
and Uh, Larry's sister, Gail Newkirk, she was friends with
(33:32):
h They was, you know, boyfriend and girlfriend with Patrick
Adams to come. And so we were already to meet Patrick.
We met over Larry's house and so forth and so on.
Patrick called to say he could not come. Right during
the phone call, I was singing can you remember by
(33:55):
the delphonics right in the background. I was in the
other room, but Patrick heard it and he asked, Lovey,
who is that singing? And Larry was like, that's our
lead singer. And so Patrick called me to the phone
asked me about you know, old blah blah, you know,
where do you learn to sing? And what do you
do to do? And I can't make it today, but
(34:16):
can you meet me next week? And so that a
week later we arranged a meeting with Patrick Adams and
she was enamored with the group, but he couldn't work
with five people. So the first one to leave the
group was Michael Harris in educational pursuits, pursuing his further education.
(34:38):
So that made it a quartet myself, Vito Vermeers, Stuart
Bascombe and Larry Newkirk, and we began being groomed and
developed by Patrick Adams. Right finally they got us. Is
an amazing coincidence, all right. Patrick became friends with gene
(34:59):
Red who was the manager. Now, when coon A Gang
first came out, they were an all instrumental band. There
was no vocals or anything. They just playing came out
and jammed all these soul instrumentals. That was dope, right,
and you know people bought them and dance to them,
and they were quite popular, doing quite well. So Patrick
(35:22):
suggested the gene or vice versa, that, uh, why don't
you let my group permitted themselves and by singing a
couple of songs being backed by a coon a gang.
And they said yes, they said yes. So we were
giving two songs, Love on the Two Way Street and
everybody is a star? Right that coonian and learned to
(35:45):
play behind us to the group. Right now, this is
before we had any idea me and the Bell brothers
that we were related. We I just they were Bells
and I knew that I was the son of a Bell, right.
But uh so that is how black ivy. After a minute, Uh,
(36:12):
Larry Newkirk and Vito rameris left to pursue there further
education and so forth, and so leaving just me and Stuart.
But Larry's brother, Todd Newkirk had was developing a group
to follow behind us, Shades of Mellow. So in that group,
the best singer was Russell Patterson. Okay, so we went
(36:37):
it was just me and Stuart. We went to Russell
and we said, hey, we do be interested in being
were part of this nonsense going on over here.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
You could just steal somebody from their group.
Speaker 4 (36:50):
Yeah, basically, basically we basically stole Russell. That group dissolved,
and that's when Stuart and Patrick got on the phone
with each other and changed the name Mellow Souls as
like hokey as hell, like the mellow who doesn't who
doesn't do that? So Patrick and Stuart got on the
(37:12):
phone and they came up with Ivory, and then black Ivory,
you know, kind of described us because Russell and I
were this complexion and Stuart was light, you know, his
light skin brother. So that puts you in mind of
the piano and piano keys and all of that. And so.
Speaker 2 (37:32):
That's why y'all named y'allselves Black Ivory.
Speaker 3 (37:35):
Oh wow, that's the best colorism story I've heard actually,
speaking of which I didn't even plan this moment, but
right at this moment, I'm watching you guys on socialet. Yo,
your your afro is highly highly impressive.
Speaker 4 (37:57):
Wow, oh my god. First of all, I gotta I gotta,
I gotta say you are the only person with that footage. Oh,
I know in the world.
Speaker 2 (38:12):
I realized this.
Speaker 3 (38:12):
I'm we have can I can I explain to you
why I have this footage? But you guys can take
a wild guess why have his footage?
Speaker 4 (38:19):
But we've been I've been looking. I've been looking for
that footage, to see that skill, that one performance. No,
what goes around comes around.
Speaker 3 (38:29):
Yeah, obviously I'm working on a project, and you know
I keep the show on. Even if I weren't working
on it, I'd be watching all eleven hundred episodes of
the Soul Track like it.
Speaker 2 (38:41):
This is always stays on, no matter what. It's like
my aquarium.
Speaker 4 (38:45):
You don't know how crucial. We have been looking for
this that footage for over forty years, Right over forty years.
The Soul Train compilations came out. One episode, Oh this
missing Black Cobby and Hugh Methon.
Speaker 2 (39:03):
You messe Quila and from Chicago, Don's homeboy what's his name?
Speaker 4 (39:10):
You have the interview where Don don canille I not
the all over my stage and I said, well I
couldn't help it.
Speaker 2 (39:19):
The mud up.
Speaker 4 (39:21):
Oh my god, I got you back over there. I
wanted to walk back over there. Let me see.
Speaker 3 (39:33):
Can you basically talk about Patrick adams likes as a
record collector and especially Perception Records, you know, I know,
I always knew it as a jazz label, like I know,
like some of the funkier Disney Gillespie stuff and you know,
well also fat Back.
Speaker 2 (39:49):
But like James Moody, like a lot of jazz artists like.
Speaker 3 (39:53):
Weren't It wasn't Perception primarily a jazz label.
Speaker 4 (39:56):
It wasn't entirely a jazz label U And they were
breaking into R and B and other marketplaces, which is
why they found a place for Patrick because he was
the voice of Harlem coming from the R and B
side of things, and that's why he ended up being
an art director. But yeah, when we went to the label,
(40:19):
it had Johnny Hartman was one of the artists on
the oh Johnny Hartman. It was Dizzy Gi Leslie. He
was on the label. But they had they had they
hadn't really broken up the Today label. We were the
ones to really break that label open Today. Yeah, Patrick
(40:42):
was He became my absolute mentor and the guy who
allowed me and and supported me and getting my focus
together to become whatever I would become in the industry.
Speaker 3 (40:57):
So basically you're watching him in the skideo and this
is how you're getting your education.
Speaker 4 (41:02):
Or I'm stealing and everything. I could steal every little part,
and I was like, how did you do that? And
how did you? And he loved He loved working with
me because he loved the idea that I could come
up with on my own. You and I was my
first composition commercial composition. Wow. I wrote that when I
(41:23):
was sixteen years old, and Stuart came in and did
the lyrics to it. Patrick loved it because I didn't
even know that I was using two four timing and
six four timing, and so I would just like playing
something that I liked. But You was like, oh, that's
so great, and we're going to do a record, and
we did this seven minute epic yes of You and I.
Speaker 2 (41:45):
You and I?
Speaker 4 (41:46):
Right, that the thing for everybody to have. But so
Patrick is entirely responsible for introducing me and bringing me
into the the music industry. I can say that unequivocally.
There's no one more was Patrick. Was he a white guy,
(42:06):
black guy? I've seen pictures of him, He's black.
Speaker 2 (42:10):
Okay. For for our listeners out there that are hip hop.
Speaker 3 (42:15):
Heads, you and ize the sample to uh Q tips
getting up right?
Speaker 4 (42:20):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (42:22):
Getting up?
Speaker 4 (42:23):
Was that?
Speaker 2 (42:24):
Was that shocking?
Speaker 3 (42:24):
For you to hear it have somewhat of a resurrection
of sorts.
Speaker 4 (42:30):
Q Q tip is just a really cool bubble. He's
just straight up above board, all right. And what happened was,
I was working for working at Manny's Music on forty
eighth Street for a little while, you know me, and yes,
you get actually came in and sort me out right
and said, I want to I'm thinking about using you
(42:54):
and I for you know what, for this new song,
and uh, I want to do it the right way.
So I knew I found out that you were working here, right,
you put me onto your publishers so that we can
work out a licensing deal, right, And I always respected
him for doing that because there's so many underhanded ways
(43:18):
you can you know, you know, decided to have the
integrity to come straight at it and to do the
right thing. And I always respected Kamal for that. But yeah,
he actually did the right thing by us.
Speaker 3 (43:33):
So by putting two and two together, can I assume
that you guys' decision to record Don't turn Around and
Philadelphia Sigma Sound had to do with your cousin also
working out of there.
Speaker 4 (43:49):
Boll Patrick and Tom Bell had a rivalry to you know,
it was New York versus Philly. Tom Bell was the
one of the leading had lists of the Philadelphia Sound.
They became friends, so forth and so on. They knew
each other professionally, and Patrick was always trying to create
(44:09):
great records and great songs like don't Turn Around. When
he became the the vice president of the and r
AT at Perception Today, they gave him the budget to
go to Philly and use I think we use half
of MSSB.
Speaker 3 (44:29):
Yeah, Norman Harrison, Vince Montana like all the cats, right.
Speaker 4 (44:33):
And the dudes. The other half of the band, of
the rhythm band was Willie Feasta and the Mighty Magnificence
right all right, which was the all platinum Stang Records.
Speaker 2 (44:44):
Yes, the Sylvie Robinson Crew, Right.
Speaker 4 (44:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (44:47):
So I was gonna ask how did you manage?
Speaker 3 (44:48):
Because when I read read the album credits, I'm like,
wait a minute, is this all just a tri state
thing or like we're because I think for a lot
of us, when we think of the Philly sound, we
literally think that everything is going through gamble and huff
and it really wasn't until one day Joe Tarcia told me, like, no,
like you know, there's a period where even the ms
(45:13):
MFSB Cats broke away from Gamble and Heff as session
musicians and decided to produce themselves. But since they recorded
at Sigma, you know, it all sounded the same because
of the of you know.
Speaker 2 (45:26):
The equipment they used and.
Speaker 4 (45:28):
So yeah, just the style of the music there they
all do.
Speaker 3 (45:32):
Right, So people didn't feel a certain way, like I
would think that like Gamble and Huff would feel a
certain way if you know Dexter Wanzel or or or
or Vince or whoever is like at the Helm or
even your cousin, Like, it all sounds the same because
it's the same musicians, the same engineering, the same studio,
(45:53):
the same instruments. So I'm just thinking, like this is
all going through Gamble and Huff, but cats feel a
certain way about like.
Speaker 4 (46:02):
Well, here's my best answer to that. It began as
a partnership Gamble, Huff and Bell, all right, the three
of them were together. That's where you get mighty three
music and so forth.
Speaker 3 (46:17):
Okay, I didn't realize that Bell was like a part
of their I just thought he was like way I
used the studio as well. I didn't realize that he
was see where Mighty three came.
Speaker 4 (46:27):
From an integral part of the Gamble when they always
in their twenties and stuff like that. They were together, right.
The Iceman comings with an album produced by Gambling, Huff
and Belle. Okay, one of my favorite songs, are You Happy,
completely arranged by Bobby Martin and Tom Bell. All right,
(46:49):
So they were always connected. And then as music evolved,
they became Kenny and Leon, and then Tom Bell went
off and did his delphonics thing, right, while Kenny and
Leon did the intruders, and you know that became the
early Old Jays and so forth and so on so
and next thing, you know, Tom Bell is doing on
(47:12):
the spinners, and you know that whole that whole sphere.
But yes, indeed, every time they went into the studio,
whether it was Gambling, Huff or Tom Bell, they used
the same musician Norman Harris, Earl Young on drums all
the time, Vince Montana. They were the same cats, and
(47:33):
they all had this light style of composition, right Whereas
Gambling the songs that they wrote were similar. They came
from the kind of the same place, right, and then
using the same musicians to realize these songs create that
specific sound, the Phil Lee sound right, which can come
(47:55):
from either Gambling Huff or Tom Bell and later on
Dexter One, Hell, Whitehead so Forth and Offshoots, Uh, Norman Habits, Baker,
Habits Young so Forth and so on. In the Vince
Montana camp, they were all United and Sigma Sound Studios,
and they would call each other up for the babous sessions.
(48:18):
So that's why all the records started sounding like each other.
Speaker 2 (48:24):
Thank you for finally saying that I just never.
Speaker 4 (48:27):
Knew right and talk to all of them. Sorry, I'm
sorry now.
Speaker 5 (48:31):
I was gonna ask before we got off the first album.
I keep asking questions, Yeah, uh, how how did it
feel when you heard that, you know, being used in
that way for Criminology?
Speaker 4 (48:48):
Same story as come on, Yeah, I don't think so.
Speaker 1 (48:53):
Or no or no I heard.
Speaker 4 (48:57):
I'm like, all right, I don't think it's gonna be
the same.
Speaker 3 (48:59):
I can't wait to get to over like a fat rat.
Speaker 2 (49:04):
This is all like after the fact.
Speaker 4 (49:08):
I didn't know about Criminology until way after it came out.
Was successful, right, And my first response was the old
R and B head Right, this rap is taken over right.
I don't know what are they saying to the kids,
(49:30):
and some of them I went with the t on them.
But then it was doing so well, and then it
went gold and then it went platinum. I might be
okay with this. I might just be okay this, And
(49:53):
I actually am looking at the platinum black right there
only built only for Cuban links.
Speaker 2 (50:00):
Yeah, I was gonna say for a lot of us.
Speaker 3 (50:02):
I mean, yeah, my dad had your records, but it
is those records that made us.
Speaker 2 (50:10):
Really truly like revisit those.
Speaker 3 (50:13):
Records and look down the credits and then just really
get lost in your history. So I know in the
beginning it's a little jarring because you're like, my work's
being torn apart or whatever, but you know that if
there ever was an album for you to be associated with,
(50:35):
that was the record.
Speaker 4 (50:38):
That started a trend, and a trend that begun earlier
by I think it was remember Strictly Business, that movie
Barry Grandpa, but he took fat lap, he used over
like a fat vat.
Speaker 2 (50:56):
Yeah, I was.
Speaker 4 (50:59):
I was not cool. Within July saw the first chat
and then I realized, yeah.
Speaker 2 (51:10):
Hey, everybody, what's up. This is Fonte from Team Supreme.
This interview was so good so nice.
Speaker 4 (51:16):
We had to do it twice.
Speaker 5 (51:17):
We put it up, put it, broke it up into
two parts. Honestly, this was one of my favorite interviews
this season. I wanted to talk to Leroy for a
long time and he did not disappoint. So please check
back in as Leroy tells us more about his life
and career.
Speaker 4 (51:30):
Peace Shall.
Speaker 1 (51:42):
What's Lop Supreme is a production of iHeart Radio. For
more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hosts And Creators
Laiya St. Clair
Questlove
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