QLS Classic: Herb Alpert

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. This classic
episode was produced by the team at Pandora.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
This is Sugar Steve and On this week's Quest Love
Supreme classic jazz musicians. Songwriter and co founder of A
and M Records, Herb Alpert talks about the art of
the trumpet, writing hits with Sam Cook, the secret to
out selling the Beatles, and how he really feels about
getting sampled by Biggie. Originally released October fourth, two thy

(00:32):
and seventeen.

Speaker 1 (00:36):
Ladies and gentlemen, Welcome, Welcome to a very special one
on one edition of Quest Love Supreme.

Speaker 3 (00:43):
Well so one on one.

Speaker 1 (00:44):
Well you're here too, Sugar Steve's always you know, one
of the one of the great things about one of
my many jobs that I have is the interaction I
get to have with an endless parade of musicians and
artists that come to the tonight show so kind of

(01:07):
off the cuff and spur of the moment I thought
it would, I'd be remiss.

Speaker 3 (01:14):
If I behoove you like behoove.

Speaker 1 (01:16):
No, That's why I said remiss instead of behoove. Well,
I changing my style, Steve, that you know, if I
didn't have an in depth conversation. Uh with I meant
to say, renaissance man is almost cliche at this point.
I guess if you like do three things well or
four things, well, you're a renaissance man.

Speaker 4 (01:37):
But hey, I can chew gum too.

Speaker 1 (01:41):
Okay, now, now he's a renaissance man. Tell me the
world's greatest gum cheer of all time. Please welcome to
a very questlove supreme special. Uh mister Herb Albert.

Speaker 4 (01:54):
Well, thank you very much. Hey, well, what a round up? Applause?

Speaker 1 (01:58):
Thank you? How are you today?

Speaker 4 (02:03):
I'm feeling good.

Speaker 1 (02:04):
You're good?

Speaker 4 (02:04):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (02:04):
Good. I guess as of this recording, you're in New
York doing a residency yet, right, Yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:10):
We play at the Cafe Carlisle. There's our fifth time there. Okay,
I enjoy it. It's fun.

Speaker 1 (02:16):
You know.

Speaker 4 (02:16):
This is a small little group of people. I think
the room holds about ninety people, and it's really up
close and personal. In the sixties, I used to play
for the Height of the Tijuana Brass. We were playing
for like twenty thousand people at the Big Arenas.

Speaker 1 (02:30):
I was going to say, what do you prefer, like
the intimate setting or like the.

Speaker 4 (02:35):
Actually I prefer a room that has a good sound
with an intimate setting, you know, that's the best. In
the old days, it was like you never really got
a feeling of the audience. They were just way out
there someplace. And that was the days, you know, when
people smoke, so you could see people light up cigarettes,
and for the most part, you don't see that anymore.
But I like the intimate setting. It's more fun.

Speaker 1 (02:57):
Oh cool, cool. So I had to say, we have
to discover your music. When I was a child, I
had a father had a very extensive record collection. I'm
sure that I'm not alone in which I thought you
were naturally of Mexican descent.

Speaker 4 (03:14):
Episo did I for while?

Speaker 1 (03:17):
No.

Speaker 4 (03:17):
I used to go to bullfights in Tijuana in the
springtime for about three years I did before I just
decided I don't like bullfighting anymore. But you know, that
was an experience for me. And I never heard mariachi music.
But I heard this brass band in the stands that
kind of knocked me out because they would like introduce
all the events of a bullfight, you know, like before

(03:40):
the bull would come out, they'd come up with but
bang the bull shows up, you know, and then another
fanfare for the matador and the picadors in them, So
it was kind of exciting, you know. And I tried
to translate that feeling into a song, and I had
a good melody from a end of mine, and that

(04:01):
became The Lonely Bull and that record we released. That
was the first record released on A and M nineteen
sixty two, and it took off like a rocket ship.
So it was a good feeling.

Speaker 1 (04:13):
So can I assume that before nineteen sixty two in
American culture sort of the the mariachi sound or even
the sound of Mexican music wasn't fully developed yet as
far as I mean, how popular was it at the time,
Like was it introduced to you because you specifically went

(04:36):
to these bullfights?

Speaker 4 (04:39):
I'm not sure, you know, it kind of just morphed
into me. I was, you know, I like cal Jader
and Predesprato, Macheto and those type of Latin groups. I
remember seeing one time Macheto here in New York and
it was a real eye opener for me because I
got there early. The band was on the stand, Machito

(05:02):
didn't arrive yet, and the band was very loosey goosey.
They were playing some stuff that was really kind of
straggling along, you know, everyone kind of not in the
groove of things. Then Machito came out with the cow
bell and bing bang bing bang bang, and all of
a sudden.

Speaker 1 (05:20):
Everybody everybody alive.

Speaker 4 (05:22):
Yeah, everybody came alive at the right time. It was beautiful.
So I mean that I've had several experiences where it
really hit me that is not what you do. It's
the way how you do it, and that's the way
I've been been operating.

Speaker 1 (05:37):
True, I can agree with you.

Speaker 3 (05:41):
I do agree with that's the way how you do it.

Speaker 1 (05:45):
Well, it's as far as your your your your musical development,
your your childhood. What was how were you when you
first picked up a trumpet?

Speaker 4 (05:54):
Well, I had this great experience in my grammar school
and there was a music appreciation class. I don't know
if they call it a music appreciation class, but it
was a class talking about music, and there was a
table filled with various instruments. I happened to pick up
the trumpet because I liked the feeling of it. I
was very small and the trumpets seemed to fit my

(06:18):
hand and I tried to make a sound out of it,
which I couldn't do. I was just blowing hot air
into it and that didn't work. But when I finally
you know, made sound out of the instrument and started
working on it, I realized that it was talking for
me because I was very shy as a kid. I'm
basically an introvert, but.

Speaker 1 (06:38):
More so than all musicians.

Speaker 4 (06:40):
Well, you know, it's yeah, I guess one of those things.
I've met a lot of great musicians in my days now,
but yeah, I was so anyways, the trumpet was talking
for me. It was it was saying things that I
couldn't get out of my mouth. So it was been
a great friend for me through the years, and I've
learned a lot from it. We've had our ups and downs,

(07:05):
like all musicians do. Jumping forward, Dizzy Gillespie was a
friend of mine, and Dizzy used to say, you know,
the closer I get, the farther it looks okay.

Speaker 1 (07:19):
Well, how first of all, what type of what trumpet
do you play?

Speaker 4 (07:24):
Like?

Speaker 1 (07:24):
I know there are different types of saxophones, altos and sprint,
but yeah, it's.

Speaker 4 (07:28):
A regular B flat trumpet. You know. I've had different
models through the years, and I played all the Tijuana
brass records on a Chicago Benz trumpet. But it's not
the trumpet. You know. I ran into a huge problem
playing the instrument around nineteen seventy, going through a divorce,
and I don't know, my body wasn't feeling good and

(07:49):
I was not mentally in good shape. And I had
a real problem was it was a struggle to play
the instrument. I was stuttering through the horn. I was like,
a couldn't get the note out in time, really right.
So I took some time off, and then I started
studying with a teacher here in New York, Carmine Caruso,

(08:14):
and he was known as the troubleshooter. You know. He
could teach brass instrument, he could teach any instrument. Never
played the trumpet, but he taught the trumpet. He taught
trumpet players from all over the country and all over
the world. And he used to tell me, man, it's
not the trumpet. The trumpet is just a piece of plumbing.

(08:35):
So you're essentially playing Yeah, that was his description of
the instruments. A piece of plumbing. Man, you're the instrument.
Doesn't matter what kind of mouthpiece of user, kind of
trumpet you're playing. You know, the sound is inside you,
and that's, you know, the sound I've always tried to make,
you know. I went through a period of thinking, well, man,
do I can I play like Clifford Brown? Heck no,

(08:55):
you know that guy was a genius beyond you know,
and then Miles and Louis Armstrong and all those great players.
I was thinking, well, I was trying to imitate them
for a while, and then I realized, who wants to
hear that? They've already done it? So I was looking
for my own voice.

Speaker 1 (09:15):
Well, I think you found it because I'll probably say
that next to Miles Davis, I could probably tell Dizzy
Gillespie's tone and about if you give me about twenty seconds,
I know, and maybe a touro, like there's certain Freddie trumpart. Yeah,

(09:39):
there's certain trumpet players in which you could tell instantly.
But with you, you have such a distinctive tone and
voice with your playing that even yesterday, of course, like
we all get very nervous when our heroes come to
play with us, and you know, the rule number one
is like try not to freak out in front of you.

(10:02):
So the quieter the quieter the roots are when rehearsing
like you best believe we're on our cell phone.

Speaker 4 (10:08):
Like I enjoyed playing with you guys. But I had
the supreme compliment from Miles. Miles said, you hear three
notes and you know it's so it's.

Speaker 1 (10:18):
I mean, well, I want to know how how much
practice did it take as far as your craft is
concerned before you knew? Okay, this is my lane and
stay in it. And I know that you know, were
you ever tempted? Like for me as a drummer, I
guess I've made my mark playing flat footed. When I

(10:40):
was young, Bernar Party once told me, he says, dude,
I keep food on the table with the two in
the four. You want to keep food on the table,
or you want to like, do you look mino? You know,
because drummers are or musicians always want to flex and
let other musicians know I got more technique than you
and that sort of sure, But I'd followed this advice

(11:04):
and he's like, yo, just if you just do the
two and a four that that will last forever like
a good tuxedo.

Speaker 4 (11:10):
Well, yeah, that's true to it. Agree, But I mean,
you have to be authentic, you know, you have to
be real. I don't think you can fake fake that.
You have to do something that's you're passionate about. And
if it's two and four you're passionate about, great, go ahead.

Speaker 1 (11:26):
But during the time period in which like you know,
Miles is pushing the boundaries with you know, in a
silent way and bitches brew and all this stuff, are
you thinking like, damn, like I got to catch up
or you know, or for you it's just like.

Speaker 4 (11:40):
No, I wasn't thinking about that. I wasn't really thinking
about making hit records. I mean, that's jumping forward. But
you know, I was drafted in the Army out of UH.
I went to University of Southern California for about a year,
and I really didn't take to college. I just didn't
have that feel yet. But after the Army and they

(12:01):
sent me to Well, first off, I told them that
the only thing I know how to do is play
the trumpet, you know, I said, And I lied a bit.
I played with Dizzy, and I played with you know,
Count Basie, and I gave him the whole story of anyways,
I was a trumpet player and that was my m O.
So they sent me to band school in Fort Knox,
Kentucky and there were like about ten trumpet players there,

(12:26):
and these guys were all better than me, and you know,
and I was coming from a situation where I was
the number one trumpet player at my school and all
these gigs in Los Angeles, and I realized that these
guys could play higher, faster, louder, read better, and the
jazz was for the most part, I mean not all

(12:46):
of them, but most of them, you know, were just
pretty darn good. And I thought, if I'm ever going
to make it as a professional musician, I have to
come up with my own style, my own voice. And
that's what I start started pursuing. I heard this record
by the guitar player, how High the Moon Les Paula

(13:13):
and so Less was layering his his guitar on this
on these tracks, and I tried doing that at home.
I had two tape machines. But believe it or not,
I'm saying two tape machines. You know. When I started,
are you sitting? I said, I had a webcre wire recorder.

Speaker 3 (13:35):
It was a wire recorder, wire recorder, this pre tape.

Speaker 4 (13:39):
Yeah, it was pre tape. And it was like, you know,
if you wanted to make an edit. You needed a
soldering iron anyway, So I got the tape machines. I
got the Ampex Mono machine, and I had two of those,
and I used to go from one machine to the other,
layering the trumpet, and all of a sudden, ah, that's
a nice sound. Was the Tijuanna, the genesis of the

(14:02):
Tijuana brass sound and the stacking the horns, And when
I hit on it, it felt like right. And then
you know, came The Lonely Bull and this record, uh,
you know, it was a big hit record. And I
got this letter from a lady in Germany. I chuckled

(14:23):
when I first read it, but she said, dear mister Aubert,
thank you for sending me on this vicarious trip to Tijuana,
you know, which made me think, Wow, that music was
so visual for her, it transported her. And I said, well,
that's the music that I really like to make. Make
music that takes you someplace, you know, post a elevator music,

(14:46):
which is it's music. It's not bad, not good, it's
just there. You know, you don't go out the elevator
whistling anything.

Speaker 1 (14:53):
But it wasn't invented at the time. What's that It
wasn't invented at the time, So you know, I don't
consider elevated music to be like a four letter word.

Speaker 4 (15:04):
No, no, no, it's cool.

Speaker 1 (15:06):
But I think it's ubiquitous, like okay, like it's beyond
your home stereo, beyond your headphones, beyond your car, which
is like the three places that people mostly listen to music.
You know, when your music is in supermarkets and in
dentist office and that sort of thing, then it's like
it's it's in another dimension.

Speaker 4 (15:23):
So right, So anyways, that letter kind of stuck home,
and of course, you know, we haven't talked about it,
but I learned a heck of a lot from Sam Cook.
You know, I worked with Sam. We wrote a song together,
Sam and I and lou Adler. We wrote don't know
much about history, don't know my trigger. We wrote that

(15:47):
song and Sam was.

Speaker 3 (15:49):
A wait, you're singing you wonderful world, wonderful world.

Speaker 4 (15:53):
Yeah, but Sam and Louis I did not know this, well.

Speaker 1 (15:58):
Yeah, I didn't know.

Speaker 5 (15:58):
He was the les Paul the trumpet, like the first
one to over it. So you're saying you were the
first or one of the first to layer trumpet.

Speaker 4 (16:06):
I don't know. If I was the first, but that
was the sound, you know, that was the start of
the tea Wanna brass sound. But I learned a lot
from Sam. Sam had a really unique style. He came
out of the gospel field. He was with the Solsterers,
as you know, and Lou Adler and I were partners.
And it was right after we were hired by Keen

(16:28):
Records as staff writers, and it was right after Sam
had that big record of You Send Me and we
became friends with Sam, who was an extraordinary guy. I mean,
he just had he oozed talent. He used to walk
around with a notebook filled with lyrics. One day he

(16:50):
came up to me and said, Herbie, what do you
think of this lyric? And he opened his notebook and
I was looking at it, thinking myself, just to myself, Man,
this is corny. This is really corny, you know. I said,
how's the song? What does it sound like? He picked
up his guitar and started singing this song, and I

(17:11):
was thinking, Holy moly, man, he turned this corny lyric
into something magical because of his authenticity, his intent, his passion.
Where he put the notes, how we put the melody
together with the notes, and you know, the rhythm, the feel,
and that was just a real big aha for me.
That was the you know, it ain't what you do,

(17:32):
it's the way how you do it feeling moment.

Speaker 5 (17:36):
There's also like a simplicity to Sam Cook's lyrics and
his singing style. So did you pick is that part
of what you picked up from him? Sort of that
keep it simple?

Speaker 1 (17:47):
No?

Speaker 4 (17:48):
I don't think he thought about keeping it simple. I
think he thought about being authentic. I mean he was
doing the follow up to You Send Me, and he
was singing I Love you for sentimental reasons. And the
owner of the company kind of dabbled as a piano player,
but not professionally, And we were in the recording booth

(18:11):
listening to the playback of one of the takes, and
the owner goes up to Sam and says, Sam, you
know here in bar twelve and bar eighteen and bar
forty four you can put in a who wo.

Speaker 1 (18:25):
Yeah, that's what that live or something.

Speaker 4 (18:27):
Yeah, I mean that's the one that was the kind
of the hook of the you send mething, right, And
Sam looked at him and said Jack, And his name wasn't.

Speaker 3 (18:36):
Jack, right?

Speaker 4 (18:38):
He says, you can't just put in.

Speaker 1 (18:39):
A who wo.

Speaker 4 (18:40):
Whenever you want, man, you gotta feel it. Yeah, And
that was Sam. You know, he was.

Speaker 1 (18:46):
Feeling emotion.

Speaker 4 (18:47):
He was totally into it, you know he was. I
loved him.

Speaker 1 (18:52):
That's amazing.

Speaker 5 (18:53):
So is that what you ended up looking for to
skip forward in Ben's and artists that you were signing?
Is that specific thing that you're talking about right now?

Speaker 4 (19:02):
Well, you know I learned from him that. I'll give
you another example of him. He was he started, you know,
he was the first artist to have his own record
label called SAR remember that. And he was auditioning this
artist from the Caribbean, beautiful looking guy green Eyes, came

(19:27):
in with a little stool to put his foot on
hi as he was plucking his guitar, and I was
looking at him while he was singing, thinking that, man,
this guy is great. This guy really has something magical.
And Sam looked at me. He said, And I was
in the control room and this guy was out in
the studio and he came in. He said, what do
you think of this guy? I said, well, I think
he's pretty good. You think I should sign him? I said,

(19:50):
I think so. He says, we'll do me a favorite
turn your back on him and listen to him for
five minutes. So I turned the chair around and all
of a sudden, I didn't receive anything. The guy wasn't
talking to me. And so at that moment I realized
that there's there's something to learn. And Sam, you know,

(20:11):
didn't sign the guy, and he told me that, you know,
it's not about how you can razzle dazzle somebody with
your looks or with your movement. You know, it's just
it's it's does he does it touch you or does
it not touch you?

Speaker 1 (20:26):
You know, if only Sam knew sixty years of now.

Speaker 4 (20:30):
Well you know, yeah, well you're absolutely right, but man,
it changed with you know, computers and video and yeah,
the music videos and yeah, if you can razzle dazzle
somebody as a dancer and as a as a.

Speaker 1 (20:49):
Well now it's like singing and talent. Really, I'm not
even being sarcastic or bitter sounding like I think it's
maybe even fifteen percent of the factor and it's more
about your personality.

Speaker 4 (21:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (21:04):
Well, there's an artist out now that currently has the
number one song and their whole appeal basically rides on
them going on Instagram live like they're so charismatic as
a person that it makes you cheer for them, and
they have like serious marginal talent. But even I find

(21:26):
myself cheering for marginal talent now in twenty seventeen, which is.

Speaker 4 (21:32):
Yeah, well, yeah, I agree with you. There's a different
That was a different time though, when I'm talking about it.
And then Sam taught me how to close my eyes
and listen to the artists. And that's what I did
with A and M. When you asked me, you know
about auditioning certain artists, I would always go in there
with my eyes closed and hear the music and make

(21:53):
a judgment on that. I mean, there was an artist
I don't want to mention her name, but she called me.
She was an an M artist and she says she
had this single that was a smash man. You can't
miss with this thing. This was beautiful and she was
in the studio and she begged me to come by
and listen to it. So I did. Walked in the studio,
closed my eyes, sat down on the couch. I said, okay,

(22:16):
play it, and they played this thing and I couldn't
find any part of my body to move, you know,
I couldn't. I couldn't find my tota tap or anything,
you know.

Speaker 1 (22:27):
So there's no goose bump.

Speaker 4 (22:28):
There was zero goosebumps. And then I finally opened my
eyes and the artist and the engineer and the producer
they were dancing around the room. Man, they were just
having the best time, and I just did not get
it at all. And so well that That's always been
my measure. You know, if it gets in me, then

(22:49):
I'm good at that.

Speaker 1 (22:50):
Can I take one while, guess? Yeah? No, not read it.

Speaker 4 (22:56):
I liked reader. You know, Rita was part of the
group that the Mad Dogs in Englishmen. Yeah, yeah, that
was a pretty amazing moment for me too.

Speaker 1 (23:10):
Would I would like you to at least explain to me,
I guess the perception of California musicians, and I mean,
I'm putting you kind of in the jazz genre. I
don't know if do you consider yourself a jazz artist
or an instrumentalist.

Speaker 4 (23:25):
Or I think I'm an improvisational artist in well, see,
that's a whole long discussion, because I think jazz needs
a renaissance, it needs a revision. And Miles had it,
you know, Miles kind of took it forward. I think
he understood the genre just about probably better than any

(23:46):
other jazz musician. You know he would, I don't know.
He was involved in the melodies, in the feel, and
always choosing the right musicians to play with. And I
think we need that. I think the day of playing
the song and then everybody taking a course and then
playing the song again, I think that's old hat.

Speaker 1 (24:08):
Well, I'm only asking because like the perception of I
guess the perception of the New York musicians snobbery, which
New York is considered cool and cold and not as
laid back as California. So thus it's sort of the
perception that you have to suffer for your art, or

(24:29):
it's a gritty you have to come from a gritty
environment for your art. Whereas you know, you look at
these California musicians, and I know that New Yorkers sort
of looked down on them. Like was there as far
as like the perception of your contemporaries at the time,
like were you mixing it up with Chet Baker or

(24:50):
you know, the California instrumentalist of the time period of
the late fifties.

Speaker 4 (24:56):
Definitely, yeah, no, but I was in high school. Chet
was playing with the quartet with Jerry Mulligan at the place,
a place called the Hag and I used to go
there to see them in high school. Uh, and it
was it was a great experience obviously, you know, there
was no piano, just based drums and chat and Jerry

(25:17):
Mulligan and the and the four of them just made
some music that was very very avant garde and beautiful
at the time. And I remember when they wanted to
take a break, Jerry Mulligan would get up to the
microphone and say, shortly.

Speaker 1 (25:38):
Cut to the chase, Yeah, just shortly, so about the
Tea Wana brass. Can I assume that that was just
the Wrecking Crew and name only like or was there
a point where you actually like on the record that
has to be the recond Crew because it was so
clean sounding right well up.

Speaker 4 (25:59):
Through the Whip Cream and Other Delights album. That was
not all the Wrecking Crew, but it was definitely Hal
Blaine on drums, Carol Kay sometimes on bass, and guitar,
mainly bass. Yeah, I used musicians of my choice, and

(26:21):
that's how it started, because you know, I had this
idea of how I wanted the record to sound, and
I knew the musicians in town, so.

Speaker 1 (26:32):
But when it came to reproducing that.

Speaker 4 (26:34):
Live, yeah, well, after the Whip Cream and Other Delights album,
I got an actual group together, and it was always different,
you know. It always gave me a feeling like it's
not quite the sound that I made on record, but
it's okay. I had a great drummer, Nix s so Roli,
and I went to the musicians that I found. I

(26:58):
went to their strength. Instead of trying to give them
something that they couldn't do, I tried to see what
they could do really well. And the music kind of
took a turn from that point on.

Speaker 1 (27:11):
What were your audiences looking like at that time period?

Speaker 4 (27:15):
Wow? When when the Tijuana Brass really hit after the
Whipped Cream album, it was young and old, it was
it was a basic I had this experience in Seattle, Washington.
We were playing there with the new group and the
my partner Jerry moss I recorded a record called third

(27:38):
Man Theme. He loved it, you know, and on b
side was a Taste of Honey. So in Seattle, Washington
at the Edgewater End, every time I played Taste of Honey,
the audience went wild. I mean they loved it for
some reason. And sometimes I played it twice in a row,

(27:59):
and I called.

Speaker 1 (28:00):
So, it's only two minutes, so how would.

Speaker 4 (28:02):
You well, I mean, you know, they liked it so
much they let's hear it again. So I called Jerry said, man,
you're on the wrong side. It's taste of honey. He says, Ah, Man,
you can't. He says, it's not a good radio song.
It's it's uh, you know, stops in the middle twice
and it slows down and you can't. You know, it
wasn't suited for radio. I said, look it, man, there's

(28:23):
a focus group up here, and I'm telling you it's
taste of funny. Let's try it. So we eventually turned
it over and that that's the record that really opened
the door for the Tijuana Brass because after that then
we started performing in all the major shows, you know,
the Ed Sullivan and Dean Martin and Andy Williams and
Danny k all those big shows wanted us. So from

(28:46):
that point on we were sailing.

Speaker 1 (28:48):
So let's bring in Jerry Moss. How did you how
did you two meet?

Speaker 4 (28:53):
Well, we met, Uh. My story is we met him
in New York. I met him in New York. History
is he met me in Loss Lou Adler and I
did a record that was a huge monster here in
New York called Alioup and our friend Ted mutual Fred
friend Ted Fagin was the head promotion man Madison Records,

(29:18):
and he went to school with Jerry and he introduced
me to Jerry. And Jerry was a promotion man. He
was just getting going, but he had a great feel
for records and a great field for people. He's a
real you know, he's a real person. And we got
together in Los Angeles started talking about producing a couple

(29:42):
of records. What he wanted to do a record with
an actor friend of his. And I had this record
that I was fooling around with called tell It to
the Birds that I was singing on, and we put
out Tell It to the Birds, and we put out
this record that he wanted to put out and tell
It that the birds started popping up. It started happening

(30:03):
in San Francisco and Los Angeles and we turned it
over to Records for distribution. They gave us I think
five hundred dollars for that plus a percentage, and with
that money we recorded The Lonely Bull, which was an
offshoot of my visits to Tijuana and I played it

(30:26):
for a disc jockey friend, b Mitchell Reid was a
friend of mine that he was the number one jock
in Los Angeles, and I played the demo for him
before it was released, and he said, where's the hook?
I said, what do you mean the hook? He says,
you know you need a hook. I said, man, this
is an instrumental. It's not a vocal. He said, you

(30:46):
think about a hook. And that's when I called Ted
Keeps at Liberty Records, who was the head engineer, and
he had this tape of thirty thousand people screaming Ola
had a bullfight, and he gave it to me to use,
and that was the thing I used, right in the

(31:07):
front of the lonely bull, and that was the supposed hook,
and that Cada pulled it. The record. Man, it took off,
and it took off in it broken in San Francisco,
right and there was a disc jockey, Jim Lang who's
also on The Dating Game, was the MC of that
for a while, and he broke that record, and I

(31:31):
went up to San Francisco to thank him. You know,
I walked into the control room and I introduced myself.
He was excited and I said, man, I want to
thank you for playing that record. Thank you so much.
He looked at me and says, I wouldn't have played
it if I didn't like it. And from that point on,
I never thanked the jock for playing the record. I
thought that was a very appropriate thing to say. You know,

(31:54):
I would hope to think that they liked the record,
that's why they're playing it.

Speaker 3 (31:58):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (32:00):
So wait, Well you mentioned Lou Adler, which I'm thinking
because you two went down similar paths, and I know
that eventually he did a distribution thing or association thing
with his label. But did you two never discuss, uh,
starting a partnership together, like starting your own label at

(32:21):
one point.

Speaker 4 (32:22):
Or not a label. We were partners, you know, we
wrote you know, Lou dated my ex wife, Oh boy,
no sound effects. But that's how I met Luke he
was married to after that, he was married to my

(32:44):
ex wife's girlfriend, Damn Lou, and we became friends. We're
very I love the guy. I remember, We're very close.
And we started He wrote poetry and I wrote some
melodies to his poetry, and we took around these demos
after making demos records, and this one, well, we took

(33:07):
this demo to Specialty Records in nineteen fifty seven or so,
and Sonny Bono was the head and and R guy
Specialty Records at the time, and so he listened to
our records and he said, look, I want to be
honest with you guys. I think you guys ought to
get out of the business. But we like Sonny. He

(33:32):
was an interesting characters col Yeah, that was cold. That
was a coold thing to tell anyone. You know, I'd
never do that, you know, even at A and M
and I interview and audition groups, and I tell them
if I didn't get it, I say, look it, man,
just because I ain't receiving anything, don't mean you ain't
sending something. So don't give up, you know, do whatever

(33:54):
you know you're passionate about doing. Anyway. So when I
you know, got this job, I told you before as
writers for Keen Records, And that's how we met Sam
Cook and have been bit of boom. A lot of
things happened from.

Speaker 1 (34:10):
That because because of his because of his New York association.
Have you ever done anything in the Brill building at
all or considered going to?

Speaker 4 (34:22):
No, But you know all those writers, those great writers,
you know Backreck recorded for us and Carol King and
all those I know they came out of that place.
And Jerry Leeber and Stoller. I knew those guys. Liber
went to Jerry liber went to the same high school
I went to. He was a couple of years ahead

(34:43):
of me. But he was an extraordinary guy. He uh,
he was very innovative. You know that that record of
There Goes My Baby by the Drifters, it was his
idea to put strings on. That was before anybody put
the string section on a record. And the story of

(35:04):
him dancing around the studio kind of telling the string
players you know what he wanted to hear. It was
very vivid. And those guys you know, obviously made some wonderful,
wonderful records together.

Speaker 1 (35:19):
So how easy or challenging was it to form your
own label, because you know, I mean, today it's so
do it yourself. People can make a complete album on
their laptop very little resources, and the quality is just

(35:40):
as good as spending you know, at an entire budget
in the studio. But you know, why did you not consider, like, oh,
maybe we should take this to Columbia, or maybe we
should take this to you know, mercury or something like
an established label, because I tend to think that to

(36:03):
be to be a creative, it's just hard enough. Now
you've got to be a creative person and you got
to be a businessman, right.

Speaker 4 (36:12):
Well, lucky for me, you know, I'm not a businessman,
and my partner Jerry Moss was is.

Speaker 1 (36:22):
But it's still your business though. I'm sure that you
guys have to have like a fifty to fifty kind
of like. Okay, I got to make some decisions and
come to meetings and shaking.

Speaker 4 (36:31):
Oh yeah, definitely. But I had this major experience. Yeah,
I recorded for RCA Victor before I ended records. I
recorded for them for about a year and a half, okay,
maybe two years, and I was I filed everything I
didn't like about how they treated me. You know, I
was a number to them, I was. I wasn't the
Herb Albert. I was three eight two five one take three,

(36:53):
you know that type of guy. And in this recording
facility they had that was very ice cold. It was
you know, white on white on white on white, and
then in the control room it was no different. It
was a cold place. And I was listening to a
playback of one of the songs I did, and I
wanted to push up the bass channel because I needed

(37:16):
more bass on the sound. And I went over to
the board and I lifted the bass up and with
the pot and the engineer slapped my hand.

Speaker 5 (37:29):
I get out of wow, no wait, yeah, you don't
allowed to do that.

Speaker 4 (37:33):
No, and uh, you know I he said, don't ever
touch this board again. This is a union house and
blah blah blah, and yeah yeah yeah, And so I
filed all that, thinking like, man, shouldn't a record business
company shouldn't revolve around the artist, you know, And that's

(37:54):
what I tried to do at A and M and
was a really peaceful company and we were thinking about
the artist and had this well, you know, when the
Lonely Bull happened, our distributors around the country said, why
don't you guys take the money and run. You know,
you got lucky with this Tijuana brass thing, your close

(38:16):
proximity to Tijuana, and it's not going to happen again,
Like that's an instrumental. Instrumental zon't happen that often. And
those that gave us fadder for trying to hang on
to it. See how long we could hang on. They
wanted a Lonely Bull album, which we gave them, and
that sold well, so we tried to hang on to

(38:37):
it as long as we could, and we started recording
a couple other artists and the big aha for me,
and this was the moment that I realized that A
and M was going to be successful. We signed Waylon Jennings.
Whylan was living in Phoenix, Arizona, and he was He
played with Buddy Holly and he was for some lucky reason,

(38:59):
he didn't get on that airplane, but I used to
fly down to Phoenix. We signed him to a four
year contract. He used to fly down there and record
him and he really wanted to be a country artist.
And I you know, did a record with him called

(39:20):
four Strong Winds that was excellent. It was really had
a good feel. He got this call from Chad Atkins
who heard that record and made some you know overtures
to UH to Whalen, which he probably shouldn't have done
because he was Whalem was under contract us. But he said,

(39:42):
you know, when when Whalen gets free, he'd like to
talk to him. Whalen told me about that, and at
that point I wanted to take Whalen just a little
more pop. Whalen wanted to be a country artist, so
he was all excited about chat Atkins calling because chet
Adskins was the messiah of country music at that time.

(40:02):
He was the an R head of RCAA Victor and
so we talked it all over. I talked it over
with my partner Jerry, and we decided to let Waylan
out of his contract so we could go with Jet
and we had about three more years on his contract.
And I remember the day that we signed his release

(40:24):
and I looked at Jerry. I said, this guy's going
to be a big star, and Jerry said, yeah, I
think so too, and we let him out. And I thought,
from that point on, man, if we could be that honest,
that authentic and that caring for our artists, we were
going to do. We were going to do.

Speaker 1 (40:41):
Okay, who was the first artist you guys signed outside
of releasing your own music.

Speaker 4 (40:50):
Well, there were a couple of hours. One was George mccerrn,
who was the bass singer with the Pilgrim Travelers and
that was like the number one gospel group in the
which I learned a lot from, by the way, just
thinking back on that as you mentioned that because I
used to watch them record and it was just the
five guys with George mccern who called himself Oopy. He

(41:15):
was singing bass, and then just a guy playing snare
with brushes, no big deal, no big backbeat, you know,
no two and four slamming at you, and these guys
would would just make you feel like, Wow, this this

(41:36):
unrelenting time zone that these guys were in, and the
feeling and the the energy that they had, it was
just like swinging swinging hard. And I thought from that point, man,
you don't need all that stuff to make a good feel.
It has to just all the musicians have to gel
together in a common cause, you know what I mean.

(42:00):
So George mccurrn was one. We had a group called
the Kenjelaires that was a vocal group. Didn't do very well,
but they had a nice sound. And then Wayland came along. Yeah,
but the Tijuana Brass was We were kind of supporting
A and M a long until around nineteen sixty seven
or eight we signed a group called the We Five.

(42:25):
You were on my mind. It became number one record
and then sixty six, well, in sixty six we signed
Brazil sixty six, Sergio Mendez in Brazil sixty six. That
was a big one for us because they had a
really unique sound. You know, we auditioned them and remember

(42:48):
walking in this room and hearing this hybrid sound of
Brazilian classical jazz, Brazilian jazz, American jazz pop. They had
that whole thing. And then my wife, Lonnie was the
lead singer.

Speaker 1 (43:00):
I lost my mind when I realized that. I think
she was promoting her book and when she mentioned that,
and then it finally hit me that, oh my god,
she's the one of the female voices of Brazil sixteen.

Speaker 4 (43:17):
Yeah, so she was not one of them, she was
the singer. Yeah, I doubled her. I got that hy puppa,
the t want to brass twist on her on Sergio's
thing because they had another girl. There were two girls, yeah,
and one girl was very beautiful, but she was not
a recording artist. You know. She just have that sound.

Speaker 1 (43:37):
And when I heard my wife was that voice.

Speaker 4 (43:39):
Yeah, she had that voice, and that was her sound
on you know, Maski, Nada, Fool on the Hill and
all those early records that I produced with Sergio.

Speaker 1 (43:51):
What was the question, Well, no, I'm just going through
your initial roster of Vietnam, dealing with those those artists,
and I guess in the in the seventies.

Speaker 3 (44:09):
Well wait, we're getting awfully close to CTI.

Speaker 1 (44:14):
Yes, let's not skip CTI. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (44:17):
And Quincy, well, Quincy Man, you know, Quincy is Quincy.
He's a unique character. Yeah, he's one of those guys.
You know, you don't have to you don't see him
for eight ten months, a year or three, and you're
like old buddies right from the get go. He has
a magnetic personality, he's brilliant. He has eighteen balls going

(44:38):
up in the air at the same time, and they're all,
you know, worthwhile, they're all doing something interesting.

Speaker 1 (44:44):
We had the we had the fortune of recording our
show at the former and M Studios, which is now
Jim Henson Studios, which I guess was formerly the Charlie
Chaplin Studios. You know, even now past I'm sure that

(45:04):
anyone that goes through there that has had some sort
of history there, there's there's a feeling that you get
in that environment when the gates closed and you're just
inside of that world, in that environment. So the entire
a M Operations was inside of the former Chapman Studios.
Like that's where as far as the studio was concerned,

(45:26):
in the offices, everything was in the well.

Speaker 4 (45:28):
Not in the early days. The early days was in
my garage. I mean that's where we started, yeah, I
And then we had an office on Sunset Boulevard for
a while that was, you know, little modest place, but
then we bought the studios. I think nineteen, I don't
remember the year.

Speaker 6 (45:47):
How did you avoid the the ugly side of the business,
because I know that to be an upstart to get
your stuff played.

Speaker 1 (45:57):
I know there's a lot of hand shaking, kissing, babies, politicking,
grease and palms. I know that, you know, the the element.
What's the New York guy used to have records, Mars Leavey.

Speaker 4 (46:19):
Yeah, I believe.

Speaker 1 (46:20):
Like, how do you how do you deal with people
that see you like, oh, getting success in Hey, I
like a piece of that or you know that, because
I mean you guys were essentially always an independent label.

Speaker 4 (46:33):
Right yeah, well I personally side stepped all that stuff.

Speaker 1 (46:38):
But how can you when people are like, hey, you know,
let me let me bring my wife sings and let
me get a piece of the like again, you have
to be a business person also, like how do you
avoid how do you avoid that? Especially when the late
sixties and the early seventies was so record label were

(47:00):
so corrupted. I mean, you didn't hear about that with
your label, you didn't hear that, but with Moe Austin
at Warners. But you know, definitely, I know that a
lot of those mom and pop labels that were trying
to get the status of a CBS or a Mercury,
you know, there's a lot of grime that they had
to avoid and how do you sidestep?

Speaker 4 (47:23):
Yeah, well I never got involved personally. I heard about it,
but it wasn't something that interested interested me. And I
wasn't good at that, you know, I didn't. I just
know about trying to be me. You know, it's it's
not enough just to be yourself, you know, and work
in that world. I'm an artist, you know, I'm eighty

(47:43):
five percent on the right side of my brain. I paint,
scope make music, and I'm a lucky guy. So I
always you know, when we A and m started growing
and we had these business meetings every Thursday with lawyers
and count and and all that, Man, my eyes would
glass over. That was just like Holy moly, man, this

(48:04):
ain't me. So I kind of found a way to,
you know, get out of that thing because it was
it would it would dig into my creativity.

Speaker 1 (48:14):
So at on the business and what was your role?
Did you look for new artists that you listen to tapes? Jerry?
These brothers and sister act that we gotta sign. Man,
their harmonies are really crazy. They're called the Carpenters. We
gotta do it, Like, how do you convince?

Speaker 4 (48:29):
I didn't have to convince anybody when I wanted. I
signed the Carpenters because I loved them, period not. There
was no you know, we didn't have a committee, you
it was just my office was right next to Jerry's
and I just said, you know, I'm signing these kids.
You know they were great, but I used the Sam
Cook method with them. You know, they heard I heard

(48:51):
this tape, put it on in my office and closed
my eyes and it felt like Karen's voice was coming
right up and sitting next to me on the couch,
I said, I got to meet this girl. You know,
she's has this very interesting voice, and she didn't think
of herself as a singer. She was a drummer and

(49:12):
a pretty darn good drummer too. So signed them, and
luck be having.

Speaker 1 (49:19):
When you heard these tapes, were those harmonies hitting you
like the way that the final product was.

Speaker 4 (49:24):
Oh yeah, No, there was something there because Richard and
it wasn't just Karen. It was a combination of the
two of them. Richard Carpenter is a very creative guy.
He has great taste and songs, and he was great
with choral harmonies, and he was very instrumental in their success.

(49:46):
But in nineteen seventy, you know, they had a couple
of records that didn't do great, and people in my
own company were saying, wem man by just signing these guys.
I mean, that was the rumble I was hearing. You know,
they're a little too cute, they're little, they don't fit
on on radio, blah blah blah.

Speaker 1 (50:02):
So people thought they were like more bubble gummy.

Speaker 4 (50:04):
Yeah, bubble gummy music. No, uh huh. And so then
I gave them close to You. I had that song
that Bert Backreck and how David wrote and they recorded
it and I didn't like the recording. Karen was playing
drums and they recorded again. That wasn't it. I said,

(50:26):
we need more we need, you know, let's get them guys,
Let's get the wrecking. So Hal Blaine came in and
Joe Osbourne was on bass and they made that record.
And that record I remember after they finished it, I
played it for Bert over the phone and he flipped
out and that record was a monster. And then, of course,

(50:50):
after all the same people in my company that were saying,
why'd you sign those guys, all of a sudden thought
I was a genius.

Speaker 1 (50:57):
Christmas bonus time, Right? Did you give Bert backack his?
Were you the start of his? Because I know he
wrote this Guy's in love with You? Correct?

Speaker 4 (51:08):
Yeah, he wrote this Guy's in Love with You with
Hal David. Yeah. And that was their first number one record,
which was really interesting. Man, it was their.

Speaker 1 (51:17):
First So that started the ball rolling for.

Speaker 4 (51:19):
Well, not for them, oh no, they had my humpteen
hits before that, but that was the first number one. Yeah. No,
they have all sorts of records that were beautiful. I
mean they're really Bert is a very very unusual artist.
You know, he has his own voice, his own style.
You can't really second guess his melodies. They just kind

(51:41):
of take his someplace and there there's a logic to it,
but only he knows how to get there.

Speaker 1 (51:49):
What made you decide to sing one This Guy's in
Love with You?

Speaker 4 (51:54):
Well, there was a television show we were doing for
NBC and the director, Jack A. Lee Jr. Asked me
to try and sing a song, you know, because he
was tired of photographing me with the trumpet my mouth.
So I called Bert and asked him if there was

(52:15):
a song that he he you know, starts whistling in
the shower, or maybe a song he recorded but didn't
like the recording anyways. He sent me this Girl's in
Love with You that he recorded with Diane Warwick, and
I liked the song a lot, but the gender had
to be changed because it was written for her. Called

(52:39):
hal David flew to New York. He was living in
New York at the time, and I was there while
he was changing the lyric, and I asked him the
same question as I was leaving his house, and he
sent me close to You, and I was going to
use that as the follow up to This Guy's in

(52:59):
Love with You, which was zoom to number one in
two weeks. That record was number one after the television
show hit, and so I recorded close to you, and
I had a pretty good recording and the engineer who
was a friend of mine, Larry Levine, I said, listening
to the playback, I thought it was good. I said, Larry,

(53:20):
tell me the truth. What do you think? He says, Man,
you sound terrible singing this song.

Speaker 1 (53:26):
He's this that blunt honest with you.

Speaker 4 (53:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (53:28):
Well he was a how many naysayers in your life?

Speaker 3 (53:30):
Man?

Speaker 4 (53:31):
No, that's good. You know.

Speaker 1 (53:34):
I'm not saying your life should be full, yes, Ben, but.

Speaker 4 (53:37):
Oh look at I'm I like to have people around
me that give me the truth.

Speaker 1 (53:41):
That's that's was he right?

Speaker 3 (53:44):
Well?

Speaker 4 (53:45):
I think he was right, although I still liked the record,
but I put it away. I didn't, you know, I
got a gun shy.

Speaker 1 (53:52):
Wow.

Speaker 4 (53:52):
So in nineteen seventy, when the Carpenters had a couple
of records out there that didn't happen, then I gave
Richard Close to You. And that was the start of
their monstrous career because I mean that man, that when
that once that door opened for the Carpenters, it was
like watch out, man. It happened all over the world.
It was fantastic.

Speaker 1 (54:14):
Okay, So what was your relationship like, how did the
Creed Tailor Association come to be.

Speaker 4 (54:21):
Well well Creed. In my opinion, Creed is one of
the most He was one of the great jazz producers
I think of all time. He just had a field
for what to do with Wes and do you know,
he made some extraordinary records with Bill Evans, and he

(54:43):
just had a feel for how to market them, how
to how to package it. You know, they packaged the
record properly, and he sequenced it properly. I think he
knew what to do. That record he made with the
organ player Jimmy Smith, Jimmy Smith, that's one of my

(55:05):
favorite records, you know, the one he did with Walk
on the wild Side. And I don't know, he was
just looking for a different distribution deal and we were
honored to have him because I just love him as
a producer.

Speaker 1 (55:23):
Were you guys not worried, well, because you guys had
a lot of distribution deals. Were you guys not worried
at all about I don't know if branding was still
the thing the way it is now, Like people want
to have their branding set now and in motion, make
that front and center before even the product. But you know,
was there any fear that because I didn't even know,

(55:46):
like I know, I guess now that I'm an adult
that you know, like Tapestry is and in related even
though it was on Lose Album and all those Cheech
and Song records, well it was on records. Yeah, but
you know, but I'm just saying that, was there any

(56:07):
fear of like the label not being up in front
and you having these other subsidiary labels under you.

Speaker 4 (56:17):
No, I don't think we ever thought about that. We
were just putting out good music. You know. My partner
Jerry had the same feeling I have about music. We
try to make you know, in the early days when
we started in sixty two, you know, there were a
lot of record companies operating out of the trunks of
their car, and a lot of companies would you know,

(56:38):
get one hit record and then they make an album
with fillers. You know, they'd have the hit record and
they have a bunch of junkie records you.

Speaker 1 (56:45):
Know that are hardcovers.

Speaker 4 (56:47):
Yeah, just things that were just economically good to do
or I guess, I don't know, but we never wanted
to do that. We wanted to, you know, give the
public a fair shot and make music that we would
purchase ourselves. And then when the Lonely Bull and the
tierron and brass started happening, we hired a guy that

(57:11):
was working at the pressing plant and turned into be
our quality control person. So all the records and all
the masters that came out of it, and we're really
as clean as they could be. So we weren't thinking
about how much money we could make, how much you know,
good music we put out there, and still, you know,

(57:32):
be honest, didn't make a good living doing it. That's
what was it. That's what we were pursuing.

Speaker 1 (57:37):
How big was the staff once you guys got to
the Chaplain Studios.

Speaker 4 (57:41):
Well, at the Chaplain Studios we had thirty three people
at that time, started with the two, then there were three, five, ten,
you know, and all of a sudden it got way
out of hand, you know, towards the end. I didn't
know anybody in the company.

Speaker 1 (57:56):
In the beginning, you knew, well, well, in.

Speaker 4 (57:59):
The beginning, it was just Jerry myself, you know, that
wouldn't be make all the decisions.

Speaker 1 (58:03):
And who was your if you can recall who was
like your star an R? Who was the an R
guy that like just brought to you like your top
five favorite acts to the label, like who was the
one guy that you could depend on?

Speaker 4 (58:19):
Well, you know, there were some guys in in London
that did really well when we.

Speaker 3 (58:24):
Got okay, there we go, squeeze, well squeeze yeah.

Speaker 1 (58:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (58:30):
But then.

Speaker 1 (58:33):
So you're saying that there was an A and m
uh division in London, Well yeah, because that would plase
and yeah the place and Joe Cocker and okay.

Speaker 4 (58:42):
Yeah, well we am we had super Tramp which they
were huge in Europe.

Speaker 1 (58:46):
So all the all the British associated An m acts, Yeah,
they came out, were signed and right when did you
guys expand past?

Speaker 4 (58:56):
Yeah, okay, that was around nineteen sixty nine, I believe
you know when Jerry you know, thought that, you know,
our image at the time was kind of easy listening,
kind of cool music, and he wanted to you know,
jump into the five pan Yeah, the real stuff, the
stuff that was happening, you know, a little more edgy,

(59:18):
and that's when Joe Cocker and Mad Dogs and Englishmen
you know, got going. And that was the first time
I was kind of indoctrinated into that type of music
because I was not a stuff shirt. But you know,
I came up through the classical field and then I
was making my own music. And when I remember walking

(59:38):
into these sound stage when Cocker and Leon Russell was
playing piano and they had two drummers and Rita Coolidge
and the singers were doing the thing with they were
rehearsing for upcoming upcoming tour. I remember walking into the
sound stage. I listen to him and I had my

(59:59):
eyes closed, you know, the way I usually do. It
was open enough to see where I was gonna sit.
I sat on the sound on the stage and all
of a sudden, Joe started singing and I got goosebumps,
you know, I said, Wow, that's a sound. And I
opened my eyes and Joe was gyrating like he was
playing guitar or something, you know, as he was singing

(01:00:19):
and totally into it. And I said, hmmm, I like that.
So that from that point on, I was the door
opened for me for rock and roll and that other
type of music.

Speaker 1 (01:00:32):
So you always kept that Sam Cook theory of I
gotta I got to hear it first before I see it,
before I opened my eyes.

Speaker 6 (01:00:40):
See what.

Speaker 4 (01:00:41):
Definitely I use that always. Yeah, there was a there
was a female group that was floating around New York.
I can't remember their name, but they all the record
companies supposedly were interested in signing them. Yeah, so I
flew to New York and I think they're Basil. They
were playing at that one of those clubs, Basil.

Speaker 5 (01:01:05):
I don't rego, okay, sweet Basil.

Speaker 4 (01:01:14):
Yeah, or they were playing, and so I walked in
there and had my eyes closed and kind of open
enough to see where the seed was, and I sat
down started listening to him, and zero man zero came out.
I didn't get them at all. I finally opened my
eyes and these checks, you know, with tattoos, and they
were playing you know, this stuff that was like loud.

(01:01:38):
You know, certainly give them credit for that, but I
didn't get it. So I didn't have no interest in
signing them. And actually I don't think they even signed
to another lady.

Speaker 1 (01:01:46):
I was going to say, who they wind up being.

Speaker 4 (01:01:49):
I don't think they signed. So yeah, no, I used
that approach. I think that's that's the one. And it
got harder and harder because you know, like when MTV
he came along, and like we talked about before, you
see these guys dancing like wizards and Uh, you know

(01:02:10):
that that all of a sudden people started listening with
their eyes and that was a whole other groove.

Speaker 1 (01:02:15):
You know, it should be it should be noted, especially
for our listeners that aren't that familiar. You kind of
were the not the impetus, but uh, a lot of

(01:02:36):
those promotional videos for our listeners out there. If your
band had international hits and they weren't able to travel
to certain countries at the at the snap of you know,
in a snap and get there immediately, that was the
initial reasons why promotional performances were used for those artists.

(01:03:00):
So say, if the Lonely Bull or Taste of Honey
is is really hidden in Chili, or or or in
Japan and you can't get there immediately to you know,
to tour, you would send a promotional clip of you
playing and then they would play them on these particular shows.
Hence the idea of early videos. But your your performance

(01:03:24):
videos at least you know, all the ones that I
that I binged on on YouTube, they had concepts to them,
like you it's kind of the music video.

Speaker 4 (01:03:39):
Well, you got to think it through. You can't just
throw something in there. You know. We've had an artist
that didn't want to do music videos. There was Joe
Jackson who had the number one record, you know, and
not a particularly good looking guy. Or he couldn't dance,
and he couldn't you know.

Speaker 3 (01:03:57):
Didn't have his interesting though lucky come on.

Speaker 4 (01:04:01):
I'm saying that probably from him from his point of view,
you know, I think, and he just didn't think it
would be appropriate for him to do a music video,
which she never did. So and then you got, you know,
artists like Janet Jackson who like she had it, you know,
she didn't get by on on Michael's talent. Janet had something,

(01:04:23):
you know, she was she had her own magic. And
it seems like these these artists that could dance had
an upper hand because if he could dance really well,
they could swing. They always put these songs in the
in the proper, proper groove, and they always made you
feel good, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:04:43):
You know now now that I think about it, even
beyond the Tijuana Brass videos and whatnot, your videos for it,
particularly when not you know, when I was coming up
as a teenager, you know, BT was playing the mess

(01:05:05):
out of Keep your Eye on Me and and with diamonds.
It's weird though, I love the fact that I wonder
now that as an adult, was it important to you
to have such a heavy anti drug message, Because even
with keep your eye on Me, with the plane going
by and just.

Speaker 4 (01:05:26):
Kind of an ugly thing right there that happened, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:05:29):
No, no, no, I know, but like it actually, and
even in the Diamonds video, some some stony kid comes
up to you and You're like, just say no to drugs, kid,
and I'm like, were you imagining that? Like some thirteen
year old kid in Philadelphia is looking like, okay, herb,
I'll just say no, he told me to stop smoking

(01:05:50):
outside just an hour ago.

Speaker 3 (01:05:52):
Oh god, he did, he did?

Speaker 1 (01:05:57):
Yeah, No. But my point was that watching a string
of your videos, they kind of pressed pushed the envelope,
even though you did the putting on the Ritz video,
which I think was like a one camera.

Speaker 4 (01:06:12):
Take camera one at six takes, but one camera.

Speaker 1 (01:06:15):
So are these ideas coming from you that, like I
know you're saying that, you know it shouldn't be visuals
should be audio like the the the musicality should give
you goosebumps and Matt's what sells you, which I agree
with you, but you can't also discount the fact that
you've kind of went the extra miles and a lot

(01:06:36):
of your videos way above what people were going through
at that time. You know, with with with visuals, like
even with the Whipped Cream album cover, like you had
to know that visuals play an important role with it.
And I can't believe I skipped the whipp Cream album coming.

Speaker 5 (01:06:54):
Yes, that goes without saying that the Whip Cream Album
was mighty influence in so many ways.

Speaker 1 (01:07:01):
Yeah, he sold six million units and that's the reason
why he sold more records the Beatles in nineteen sixties.

Speaker 3 (01:07:07):
How many units did just the cover self?

Speaker 4 (01:07:10):
Well, I mean the album sold fourteen million, but I
mean the cover, it wasn't.

Speaker 3 (01:07:16):
Hard to get all that whip cream on that girl.

Speaker 1 (01:07:21):
Well, I'm in the record stores. Was it seen as
a risk.

Speaker 4 (01:07:26):
Because well, at the time it seemed risky, but obviously.

Speaker 1 (01:07:29):
Looking at it now, it looks like she's wearing a
wedding dress.

Speaker 4 (01:07:31):
Yeah, well then she's wearing shaving cream, by the way,
and she was three months pregnant, by the way, and
by the way, the sky comes up to me like
a month and a half after that record was released,
he says, Man, this is the greatest album cover I've
ever seen. I love the girl, I love the concept,
the whip cream blah blah blah. I said, thank you

(01:07:51):
so much. What about the music, he says, I haven't
had a chance to listen to it.

Speaker 3 (01:07:59):
So that's who is the girl?

Speaker 4 (01:08:01):
Uh, Dolores Erickson. She was a professional model and she's
so beautiful. Yeah, she's beautiful.

Speaker 1 (01:08:10):
Yeah she was. Now, now I see where the Ohio
players got their inspiration the honey up. Yeah, so I
guess the roots need to make it. I'm called sugar,
just keeping with sweet snacks.

Speaker 5 (01:08:22):
I think Stanley Turrentine has the sugar category covered.

Speaker 4 (01:08:28):
C T.

Speaker 1 (01:08:28):
Yeah, I know Sugar can't give us more CTR stories.

Speaker 5 (01:08:33):
Like Gulamatari is I mean? I mean, wow? Was that
done at A and M Students? Yeah, she's ct I
stuff was done there.

Speaker 4 (01:08:47):
Quincy was on an M. Quincy wasn't on C T I.

Speaker 3 (01:08:51):
Yeah, but yeah, do you mean very early the A M,
the A N M C T I.

Speaker 1 (01:08:55):
Oh, I guess I can assume that. Uh, because of
the proximity of the brothers Johnson and Billy Preston's band
and then winding up on A and M via with
Quincy is some sort of and in connection as well.

(01:09:18):
But I mean, at what point are you able to
kind of back away as the a in Albert and
Moss and just let it run on its own? Like
are you driving in the car one day and you
hear Strawberry letter twenty three and you're like, oh cool,
Oh that's all my label.

Speaker 4 (01:09:37):
No, we didn't give up. We were always there, you know,
Jerry and I made the major decisions together. The everyday
nuts and bolts I was not a part of, but
the overall brushstroke of the company and the feeling and
the artists that come came through, Yeah, we were there. No,
we had Tommy Lapumo was producing records for us. It

(01:10:01):
was you know, got his start with us.

Speaker 1 (01:10:04):
And I was going to say, who was the Did
you guys have a house system where you had your
house producers and your house engineers to engineer that sound.

Speaker 4 (01:10:13):
Yeah, we had our own recording facilities, so you know
we made those state of the art, the best equipment
and great acoustics, and you know, like I had, like
I said, I had that experience at RCA Victor that
the studio was cold. So I was very intent on
making our recording facility these very user friendly colors and feel.

(01:10:39):
I think when you walk into a studio like the
studio we're in right now, you know, you know darn
well the sound is good in here. It has that feeling.

Speaker 1 (01:10:47):
And incidentally, we're at Electric Ladies Studios in New York City,
the House of Hendrick.

Speaker 4 (01:10:54):
So we wanted to make sure if we had that vibe,
and I think the art appreciate that. In Studio B,
I put in this huge crystal, like h eight hundred
pound crystal embedded in there in the wall, and a
lot of artists would come in there and and like.

Speaker 5 (01:11:15):
Uh, it's still there, Well, well it's he took his
I took them.

Speaker 4 (01:11:20):
I took the monster out and.

Speaker 3 (01:11:21):
They replaced they they put a different one in there.

Speaker 4 (01:11:24):
Yeah okay, yeah, and uh, you know, artists would come
in there, even if they weren't recording in that particular studio,
they'd stand in front of that crystal. It would be
like they're at the Whaling Wall in Jerusalem.

Speaker 1 (01:11:35):
You know, it's energy. When Shaka Khan walked in that
studio with us, uh, she acknowledged that, you know the
energy of the crystal. So I I know that as
an artist, there's one particular project.

Speaker 3 (01:11:55):
I wanted to talk to you about Synchronicity.

Speaker 1 (01:11:59):
No, I'm talking about Herb's own career. You did an
album with Hugh Masekuila. Yeah, really, and I believe seventy
seven Soul Train is one of my all time favorite
shows and kind of the thing that I've done as
an adult is collect every episode. So seeing you kind

(01:12:22):
of make the quote Graceland move before Paul Simon did
was very interesting, especially in nineteen seventy seven when people's
eyes and you know, you had South African artists and
you know, kind of world artists with you on this project.
What was your intent? Was your intent to bring attention

(01:12:45):
to or relief to those artists from South Africa?

Speaker 4 (01:12:50):
That not really? You know, I just liked I liked Hugh.
I liked the way he played, and when we talked,
he felt that the music I was making was kind
of similar to the groove of what they do, you know,
not not necessarily all the rhythm stuff, but that there
was a compatible sound. And so we recorded together and

(01:13:10):
I think that that one record we did, man, I
think is great. Uh Skochian, Yeah, it's it's it happens man,
And there's you know, we had great musicians. Uh, and
and let Umboolu was singing in the background with my
wife Lonnie. And I had this great guitar player from

(01:13:33):
the Caribbean, Freddie, who was, you know, a groove machine,
and a couple of the guitar buts. I can't think
of their names right now. But Freddie used to every
morning I'd come in when we were doing the album.
I said, Freddy, how you feeling? He'd see everything? Is everything?

(01:13:57):
Say that every day? Uh? But I know, I loved
working with you. We traveled, we did concerts together and
had a great time. It was all always you know, fresh,
it was always lively.

Speaker 1 (01:14:13):
He did one studio album, one live album.

Speaker 4 (01:14:15):
We did exactly that. Yeah. Yeah, studio album came first,
and we did we recorded our concerts and they're both good.
They're both good albums. And some unusual players. Guang Wa
from Butswana was playing trombone and man, this guy sounded
like a wild element elephant and he just had a
whole different concept for playing jazz. So it was really

(01:14:38):
it was fun playing with them. I enjoyed it.

Speaker 1 (01:14:43):
I guess I'd be remiss if we didn't mention. Also,
Billy Preston recording for the label who of course you
know Steve and I are are We can go on
and on about the artists that have been on the label.
I'm also forgetting that this Max Pistols at one point,
and I want to know, I do want to know

(01:15:06):
what that week was like. Uh, but who are your
just in your general you're you're, you're, you're starting five?
Who were the five artists that you're like, I'm so
proud that I've had them on the label.

Speaker 4 (01:15:21):
I'll tell you who comes to mind first. Is Kat
Stevens a little bit? What what about Cat was just
a real talent. I mean he just had he oosed talent.
He was him and a guitar, his passion, he was
something special. Of course, the the uh, the police, those

(01:15:42):
those three guys far I mean one, two three, It
sounded like seven eight guys army. Yeah. And I remember
seeing it at the Whiskey you go go in l
A and thinking, wow, that's a good sound. And then
Sting was jumping around the stage like he was on
a pogo stick. And they were all fine musicians, really

(01:16:05):
good musicians. And of course when Sting went off by himself,
you know that was a whole other dimension because Sting
is a is a brilliant guy and a very sensitive,
emotional and good guy. You know, so he would be one.
Let's see. Of course, There'sio Mendez and Brazil sixty six,
of course, and Burt Backrack and Janet Jackson. Of course,

(01:16:34):
there's so many artists that it'd be hard to nail
down my top Wheeze.

Speaker 3 (01:16:41):
Right, Squeeze would be probably in the top five. I'm
I'm I'm being I'm trying to make it.

Speaker 1 (01:16:47):
He's Squeze fan.

Speaker 3 (01:16:48):
Squeeze fan.

Speaker 4 (01:16:49):
Yeah, okay, but uh.

Speaker 1 (01:16:52):
And no, there's Super Tramped. There was Frampton, there was.

Speaker 4 (01:16:55):
Yeah, well Frampton is another guy. Man, this guy, you know,
he was really a good looking kid. When you know
he recorded Oh Baby, I Love You right that thing.
But he was one hell of a good guitar player.
The guy could really play and then you know, he
had that look, and he was a really good artist

(01:17:19):
and a gentleman. I mean, I tried to surround myself
with artists that really had a nice vibe. I can't.
I couldn't hang with the sex miristles. I mean, that
was just something that was going against my grain.

Speaker 1 (01:17:35):
Whose idea was it to introduce it? I mean you
you do acknowledge that they're culturally relevant. Oh yeah, but
you know whose idea was it to sign them? And
whose idea was it to drop them two weeks later?

Speaker 4 (01:17:50):
Well it was I guess that came out of the
office in London. But uh, the uh?

Speaker 1 (01:17:58):
Like, did you do? You? Are you? Because I can't
think of any artists that you have that have been controversial?
But did you not see that the controversy of offending
the world could be a thing that can also move
units and as long as long as they're talking about this,
that's all that is.

Speaker 4 (01:18:16):
No, I didn't care about that stuff. It's uh. I
didn't like the energy that they brought to our lot.
To tell you the truth, I passed that on. But
no I didn't. I don't. I don't get that that
that that doesn't work for me.

Speaker 1 (01:18:29):
Yeah, it's it's crazy. Has there any been an artist
that you were in pursuit of that you almost had?

Speaker 4 (01:18:36):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:18:36):
That?

Speaker 4 (01:18:37):
Who?

Speaker 1 (01:18:37):
Who's like? Your your three regrets? Like I really wish
I had them more?

Speaker 4 (01:18:41):
Well, the number one would be the Beatles.

Speaker 1 (01:18:44):
You had a chance to sign the Beatles ship. Yeah
you can say that and I'll say it to ship.

Speaker 4 (01:18:49):
Okay, Yeah, well, you know everyone had a chance because
they were like going around to uh get some distribution
deal and blah blah blah. So anyways, I don't know
if we had a door into getting them, but yeah,
I think they were available around that time we started. Okay,
so yeah, Prince, what I heard those STAPs? I said, man,

(01:19:13):
let's sign this guy. There is something happening here. And
my partner had lunch with him and his manager, and
he told me that he was like, didn't have any charisma,
that he was very quiet and very reserved. He didn't think.

(01:19:34):
Then all of a sudden, you know, people were offering
them all sorts of money, and Warner Brothers offered him,
you know, eight zillion dollars. So we passed on them.
But I knew this guy was going to be an artist.

Speaker 1 (01:19:46):
He was an artist, wow, based on charisma, because I
would think that if you're eccentric, when you see eccentric artists,
then Matt to me is the sign of they're going
to make it. Because I don't know any artists that's
just all that combative. Do you show me a compatible,
friendly artist, I'll show you someone that's not at the

(01:20:07):
top of the.

Speaker 4 (01:20:07):
Yeah, no, I agree with you. But you know, the
people were throwing around these big companies, big corporations. You know,
we were just a we were just a partnership. And
you throw around a couple million bucks to an artist
and you make a mistake, Hey, your entry. You could
be in trouble.

Speaker 1 (01:20:22):
So that was monst You have a chance.

Speaker 4 (01:20:26):
With h Well. I think most of the other artists
all worked out. You know, we had some great jazz artists.
Stan Getz recorded for us, Paul Desmond, Jerry Mulligan, Willie Bobo.

(01:20:46):
Of course, Wes Montgomery was on CTI West was you
know he was he was something special, you know that
that sound of his you know, I thought it was like, wow,
what a magical sound.

Speaker 1 (01:20:56):
You know.

Speaker 4 (01:20:57):
I was doing this television show and Wes was on
the show. I was the MC and I was waiting
for Wes to come in for the rehearsal, wondering you
know what he used as a setup. And he came
in from with a little Fender guitar amplifier that was all.
It was small, it was, you know, filled with cobwebs

(01:21:22):
in the back, was dusty and funky, and he plugged
in and banged. There was there and there was that
magic sound. So there there again. You know, it's it's
all the sound comes from inside the artist. It's not
the instrument. It's that sound that they want to hear,
and that's the sound comes out.

Speaker 1 (01:21:44):
Okay. So in eighty when you well, seventy nine, when
you did Rise, which you know, brought you back to
the forefront, were you surprised at all by the success
of it? And in the reception?

Speaker 4 (01:22:02):
This ribes was recorded live in the studio, I played
the horn off. We're doing the track, and.

Speaker 1 (01:22:09):
I'm sorry, I'm laughing at one reason. I'm sorry whenever
that breakdown happens. Yeah, I'm a DJ and my monitor
speakers allowed as hell, So of course you know when
that breakdown happens and you guys are like laughing at
each other in the background.

Speaker 4 (01:22:24):
Yeah, that was at it. Obviously.

Speaker 1 (01:22:26):
I always look at my MC guy because I think
he's I'm always looking at him like, why are you
talking on the microphone, and he's like, that's not me,
that's the record. And it happens every time I spend
that record.

Speaker 4 (01:22:38):
Yeah, well that's a really really good record. And when
I was I think It was the third take listening
to the playback in the studio and I got goosebumps.
I said, Wow, this could be a big record. This
has something. And I remember walking up behind Julius Wector,
who was playing marimba on on the cut. I said, ma'am,

(01:23:02):
what do you think, Julius? He says, I don't dig it.
What's wrong with it? Yeah? You know he said, you
know he couldn't handle that boom boom boom forward to
the floor. You know that bothered him.

Speaker 1 (01:23:16):
He thought you were trying to go too much disco.

Speaker 4 (01:23:18):
I don't think.

Speaker 1 (01:23:20):
You know.

Speaker 4 (01:23:20):
What I learned from Sam Cook was to be an
audience to my music. I don't when I'm recording, I
don't listen to the trumpet player. I don't listen to
anything but the overall feeling. If the overall feeling strikes me,
I'm in. If the overall feeling doesn't strike me, I
try to do something to make it work. But Rise

(01:23:43):
had that feeling. I don't know. There was something about it.
And you know it didn't start out like that. My nephew,
Randy badass out but wrote wrote it with the drummer right. No,
he's not a musician. He wrote it with the with
the Andy Armor and they had but they wanted to
do it as a disco. It was originally at one
hundred and twenty beats per minute, and I said, wait

(01:24:05):
a minute, no man, this is a nice melody. Let's
slow it down. And we finally slowed it down to
one hundred beets per minute. I said, you know, every
now and then people want to dance together, maybe this
is the chance, because I just didn't want to make
disco music.

Speaker 1 (01:24:19):
Very wise moves on your choice. How did you feel
about Biggie's resurgence of it?

Speaker 4 (01:24:24):
And well, you know, obviously it's a good record and
it was a huge record, But I'm not crazy about
people taking your stuff. I think it just shows that
they don't have the creative to do something themselves.

Speaker 1 (01:24:37):
Yeah, but you know, yeah, I mean there's a generation
of Yeah, absolutely, Rise will now last forever in people's memories.

Speaker 4 (01:24:46):
Yeah, No, I love it. I love the checks that
come in from that too.

Speaker 1 (01:24:56):
I got I gotta say that of your entire song book,
Root one on one is I will probably go on
record and say, and I've never done this, this is
probably my favorite song of all time.

Speaker 4 (01:25:11):
All Right, I'll give you some other ones to think about,
but the Root one one is good. I did that
album with one Carlos Calderone, famous Spanish composer, arranger overall
good guy. Rest is soul be passed about four or
five years ago and Jose Quintana, the two of us

(01:25:34):
produced that record and Root one on one is definitely
a good one. But if you listen to other a
couple other ones on there.

Speaker 1 (01:25:42):
Well, I love the whole Fandango record, Yeah, the Fandemic.
I felt that was a return to your element, did
you because the groove based stuff of the Beyond record,
and I forgot what came out in eighty one, the
album after Beyond, but it was Fandango was sort of
like a return to form where.

Speaker 4 (01:26:04):
Yeah, no it was. It was a good one and
one on one it is one of my favorite songs
as well. But I was all set to do a
world tour with that and then I got hepatitis and
that I'll put the cabbage on it, so that that
record didn't receive the attention that it could have. But
there are some other records that I did. I think

(01:26:28):
I don't have to think about that. Since you've labeled
that as your favorite.

Speaker 1 (01:26:33):
Well, it's just for me.

Speaker 5 (01:26:35):
It's it's saying he knows about fifty five million songs,
so that's saying something.

Speaker 4 (01:26:40):
Well, I'll tell you the record we were doing last
night that we you know, didn't really do the whole thing,
but rotation. If you listen to that, rotation, rotations are
really good, it's a good feel.

Speaker 1 (01:26:50):
Well, all your stuff is good feeling. Actually, Well, there
was an album you made in eighty five that, uh,
all I know is that when you promoted it on
Soul Train, you had a young Lenny Kravitz on keyboards

(01:27:12):
back when he was a Romeo Blue.

Speaker 4 (01:27:14):
Yeah, that's how I knew him as Romeo. He was
used to rehearsing our studio CE and he was introduced
to me as Romeo and I thought of him as
Romeo talented guy.

Speaker 1 (01:27:26):
Was he ever a part of your touring grew or
he just did that promotional appearance on soul He just
did that, Okay, Because I was going to say when
when the drummer introduced himself he said, yeah, not badass,
and I was like, wait, did he just curse on
Soul Train? So that's why I was trying to make
the connection Oh yeah, if your drummer was badass with

(01:27:49):
jam and Lewis and keep your Eye on Me.

Speaker 4 (01:27:51):
Well, those guys were really original. They really had a
flair for picking out the right song, the right grooves,
and and I flew to Minneapolis to record. They said
they had this great song for me. And they played
the song and I said, well, what's the title? They said, Sausage.
I said, no, man, I don't think so. Yeah, well

(01:28:17):
that was that was keep your Eye on Me. That
was the original title they had was sausage. But these
guys are good, you know, they're they have a great
sense of humor. I was doing this interview for one
of the news channels and the phone was ringing rang

(01:28:38):
in the studio and Jimmy picked it up, said, Sinatra
will tell him. I'm busy. I'm working with herb Robert
right now. Will you tell Sinatra call him back?

Speaker 1 (01:28:48):
You know? Oh man, that was kind of cool. I
also love the way that you guys kind of did
the Janet Jackson trick on the Diamonds video.

Speaker 4 (01:29:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:29:03):
I always wanted to know. I guess I would have
to ask her how easy is it to say no
to your boss?

Speaker 4 (01:29:09):
I think she was doing. She was someplace else in
the world. But all right, it all worked out. It
was kind of a fun thing to do.

Speaker 1 (01:29:15):
I enjoyed it because I was waiting for it, because
I swore that was her in the limousine, the.

Speaker 4 (01:29:20):
Way that was lit. Yeah, well, the little kid that it.

Speaker 1 (01:29:23):
Turns out to be an eight year old kid. So
in eighty okay, in eighty nine, you guys decided to
sell the label. At what point, like, how did you well?

Speaker 4 (01:29:37):
I was into selling a forty nine percent, That's what
I wanted to do, and then keep fifty one and
keep control of the company. They kept upping the ante,
you know, and it reached a point where I thought,
maybe it's time. You know, the Internet was coming. The
Internet was making noise. I'm not saying that I saw

(01:30:02):
what was going to happen with file sharing, but there
was something about it that said, maybe the time is right.
So when they finally made this nice offer and they
wanted to buy the whole company, we agreed. And I'll
tell you what the interesting part of that whole thing was.
Jerry and I started the company in nineteen sixty two

(01:30:23):
on a handshake. We never signed any contract together. Lots
of millions of dollars went through the doors in various ways,
and we ended up signing over to Polydor, and that
was the first time we ever signed a contract together.
And we concluded with a big hug and Jerry is still

(01:30:45):
one of my dear friends.

Speaker 1 (01:30:48):
That's good. Yeah, so you're trying to figure out a
way for us to remember the company, Steve, Oh no, no, no, anyway, Well, her,
I thank you very much for sharing a story on
Quest of Supreme. There's so much.

Speaker 4 (01:31:02):
There's more, there's more, there's part two.

Speaker 3 (01:31:03):
Yeah, we gotta do a part two. I have one
more question. Okay, what does your record collection look like?

Speaker 4 (01:31:09):
It's not very extensive, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:31:10):
Because are you asking for that? CTI No, I was curious.

Speaker 3 (01:31:14):
I'm just curious a man like this, you know.

Speaker 4 (01:31:16):
I have a few I have some classical music that
I like a lot. I'm crazy about ravel, you know.
Daphnis and Chloe is one of the things that I
love to listen to when I feel a little down.
The Fourth Movement knocks me down, knocks me out, you know.
I love Miles like all of the musicians, and Charlie

(01:31:37):
Parker was the guy. He was on another planet. He
was doing things that will resonate for years to come.
I love Paul Desmond. Jerry Mulligan was a dear friend
of mine. Stan Getz and I were like brothers. Stan
was a guy that I really really, really really really
had a feel for it because he was he always

(01:32:00):
just said I never played a note that I didn't mean.
You know, I love that about musicians. And we were
so close, you know. He said, do you want he
wanted to give me lessons. I said no, I asked him,
I said, how about giving me some bebop lessons? I
never played with Charlie Parker and Coltrane and all those
guys you played with. And he said sure. So I'm

(01:32:23):
in my studio with Stan and I said, do you
think I should work on these two five one chords
in every key? Which is page one of Berkeley School
of Music and all the other you know, Manhattan School.
That's what they teach, you know, that's just basic. Do
you think I should work on those in all keys,

(01:32:44):
these two five one chords? He said, what's that? Which
was like a real man. These guys didn't think like that.
They were playing from another point of view. They were
looking at music from another angle. And you know, the
music's tried to break it down what these great jazz
musicians were doing. Uh so it was let's see, there's

(01:33:10):
another part of that Stan story. I wanted to tell you.
Oh yeah, yeah, so I mean yeah, So he gave
me some lessons and we talked about jazz. And here's
a pro I said, tell me that you what do
you what are you thinking about when you're playing? Because
I did this record with him. There's a beautiful record
I did called a Pascionado and one of them the

(01:33:31):
songs was a waltz for Stan and he played this thing.
It was gorgeous, and I said, what are you thinking
about when you're playing something like that? He says, well,
I think about that I in front of the whaling
wall in Jerusalem and I'm dobvining. I mean, this guy was.

(01:33:55):
He was fabulous man, he was. He had an extraordinary life.
He was you know, went through all the drugs imaginable
to man, and then the last four years of his
life he was on macrobiotics and he had cancer and
you know, so he had a kind of a split
personality when it was all when he was on drugs

(01:34:15):
and one of the musicians that it was either al
Coon or Zoot Seems when they asked him, you know
what was stand like? And he said he was the
best bunch of guys I've ever met. But I loved
him and he was beautiful. He was a real, real
good friend.

Speaker 1 (01:34:35):
Well, okay, in closing, we had to say that you
have a new album out, yeah, music Volume one, I believe,
and hopefully there will be a Christmas album coming to you.

Speaker 4 (01:34:44):
Well, there is a Christmas album. It's called The Christmas
Wish and it's with orchestra and choir and it's it's
darn good, if I must say so myself.

Speaker 1 (01:34:51):
Well, you're her a man, the best come to of
all time.

Speaker 4 (01:34:54):
Well, you know something, I think, if you don't believe
in what you're doing, why should you anyone else believe
even what you're doing?

Speaker 1 (01:35:01):
Those are wise words. Well on behalf of Sugar Steve
and the Missing Alumni and court Love Supreme. This is
quest Love signing you off. Thank you for listening, Thank
you her palper Pleasure again, thank you for coming to
the show. And I will see you guys on the
next go around only or on Pandora. Quest Love Supreme

(01:35:25):
is a production of iHeartRadio. This classic episode was produced
by the team at Pandora. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.

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