Speaker 1: Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. Ladies and gentlemen,
Speaker 1: Welcome to another episode of Quest Love Supreme. I am
Speaker 1: your host Quest Love. Uh, this is Team Supreme.
Speaker 2: Why are you? How are you doing.
Speaker 3: Something?
Speaker 4: What?
Speaker 1: I want to know? How many rooms you have in
Speaker 1: your house? Because are you in like a nineteen room mansion?
Speaker 4: Stop saying that this is my house. Just the last
Speaker 4: time we spoke, I was somewhere else.
Speaker 2: And but you have more artwork than any human I know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you've met met my parents, so yes, I do.
Speaker 4: I got I'm surprised I don't got a payre of
Speaker 4: our guests on my wall somewhere.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I see.
Speaker 3: Your dad gave me one of yourself, one of your
Speaker 3: aunt Deanna and your dad and Melbour and Lindsay.
Speaker 2: Oh mystery voice? Yeah, okay, okay, who was that mystery voice? Hey? Steve?
Speaker 2: How are you? Bro?
Speaker 5: You know, if you delete something off an iTunes playlist,
Speaker 5: all you gotta do is hit Apple X and it
Speaker 5: all comes back app You know what Apple X? You
Speaker 5: know command X? I mean help your brother anyway?
Speaker 4: Oh delete?
Speaker 5: I leave rally one day in fourteen years, Steve, Yeah,
Speaker 5: somehow a playlist gets to.
Speaker 1: You in the history of it Tonight Show, Sugar Steve
Speaker 1: has been a constant presence almost every day, and the
Speaker 1: one day he leaves, things don't fall apart.
Speaker 2: I kept things together.
Speaker 4: So yes, that was so things don't fall apart.
Speaker 2: What's up?
Speaker 6: Everybody don't hate me?
Speaker 3: My song title?
Speaker 4: It was a good album title as well.
Speaker 2: Fan Tickelo what's that brother? What's going on? Bro? What's
Speaker 2: going on? Miss Jane? It's very nice to meet you.
Speaker 3: Lovely meeting you.
Speaker 6: Yeah, My my aunt she was a big fan of
Speaker 6: your records and I would always go to her house
Speaker 6: and like play your stuff and I just always remember
Speaker 6: just your album covers. You just always look really classy,
Speaker 6: really pretty, and just always just just a really really
Speaker 6: classy singer. So it's really an honored to sit with
Speaker 6: you today. I appreciate it.
Speaker 3: Oh, it's my pleasure, and I appreciate you educating you.
Speaker 2: Yes, ma'am.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, Ladies and gentlemen, our guest today is an extraordinary
Speaker 1: singer and artists. Basically our guest today. You know, I
Speaker 1: was introduced to her via my father's illustrious record collection.
Speaker 1: A lot of jazz in there, and of course you
Speaker 1: know the black Jazz label, and I will say that
Speaker 1: all the albums of our Guest Today and her former husband,
Speaker 1: the Doug carn definitely played a major role in my
Speaker 1: personal growing up. Basically just some of the best what
Speaker 1: I call spiritual jazz. I mean, there's so many titles
Speaker 1: for it. Some people say fusion, spiritual jazz. I don't
Speaker 1: know what you call it. But there's also a point
Speaker 1: in the seventies when our Guest Today became part of
Speaker 1: the incredible stable of artists that contributed to the sound
Speaker 1: of Philadelphia, helm by Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff with
Speaker 1: such legendary songs as you know, free Love and Don't
Speaker 1: let It Go to Your Head and my Love Don't
Speaker 1: Come Easy, and then of course you know the immortal
Speaker 1: close and then close. Not to mention my song was
Speaker 1: the Flame of Love. Like, there's so much to talk about,
Speaker 1: but you know, April is Jazz Appreciation Month, and basically
Speaker 1: our Guest Today she makes jazz, she makes R and B,
Speaker 1: she makes disco, she does it all, and she's worked
Speaker 1: with all the legends. All the legends work with her,
Speaker 1: Kenny Gamble, Leon Huf, Jerry Butler, Eddie Laverert, Philip Simon
Speaker 1: or o'garner, Billy Paul, Text To Janzell, The Temptations, Groove,
Speaker 1: Washington Junior, James Dir George Do just everyone, ladies and gentlemen,
Speaker 1: please welcome so overdue our guests, the incomparable Gene car Into,
Speaker 1: Quest Love Supreme. Thank you very much, thank you for coming.
Speaker 2: How are you?
Speaker 3: I'm wonderful. How's everybody doing well?
Speaker 2: Doing well?
Speaker 1: We're great massive fans of yours and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: I thank you for doing this. You know, with a
Speaker 1: lot of our guests of late, just how the music
Speaker 1: industry is built mostly celebrating, you know, a certain type
Speaker 1: of mainstream artists and really not giving light or shine
Speaker 1: to artist of I mean, I don't want to sound
Speaker 1: like the old grumpy music lover, but you know a
Speaker 1: lot of artists that have substance or something extra to give.
Speaker 1: You really don't read that much and I don't recall
Speaker 1: ever like reading in depth interviews with you at all.
Speaker 1: But you know, I'm so familiar with your work, but
Speaker 1: you know, you don't get to see your artists in
Speaker 1: some of these mainstream publications that do music. So I
Speaker 1: thank you for finally granting us the just the honor
Speaker 1: of getting to interview you. So I'm gonna ask a
Speaker 1: lot of questions. Number one, Miss Karen, could you tell
Speaker 1: me your first musical memory.
Speaker 3: My first musical memory, perhaps, Oh, I guess in church
Speaker 3: greater amount Calvary Baptist Church, maybe singing solo in front
Speaker 3: of the adult choir. I must have been four then,
Speaker 3: because I remember. I think the song must have been yeah,
Speaker 3: because I think Mahelia Jackson had done it one of
Speaker 3: these mornings, one of these mornings home, going home to
Speaker 3: live a God. And I was just a little kid,
Speaker 3: you know, But I think that might have been my
Speaker 3: first public memory. And I did a lot of stuff
Speaker 3: at I remember a lot of stuff at home that
Speaker 3: I would do when somebody would visit us. My mother
Speaker 3: said I would give them a concert. He said. I'd
Speaker 3: put on my ballet slippers and I'd stand in a
Speaker 3: plia position with my hands like this, and I give
Speaker 3: them a concert if they, you know, if my folks
Speaker 3: asked me to.
Speaker 2: So that was just a typical occurrence, because you hear
Speaker 2: that a lot.
Speaker 1: You hear about like Cecil Franklin waking up Aretha Franklin
Speaker 1: at three in the morning, like entertainment guests like saying
Speaker 1: something for them.
Speaker 2: But so your parents were like that a lot.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, and I didn't mind, you know, so, yeah,
Speaker 3: they were cool like that.
Speaker 2: What city were you born in?
Speaker 3: I was born in Columbus, Georgia. I was in Atlanta.
Speaker 2: Okay. It's weird, like a lot of.
Speaker 1: Artists that represent Philly International, in my mind, they're always
Speaker 1: from Philadelphia, even though they just record for a Philadelphia label.
Speaker 2: So you know, it's kind of a yeah.
Speaker 3: I've always been a part time Philadelphia well for fifty
Speaker 3: years now.
Speaker 2: So you live there currently right now? You still live.
Speaker 3: There half the time here and half and the rest
Speaker 3: in Atlanta.
Speaker 1: Okay, Okay, so you never lost touch with your your
Speaker 1: home roots or anyth that those things? No, No, So,
Speaker 1: having been raised in the church, especially with down South,
Speaker 1: how does like, what is your relationship with secular music?
Speaker 1: I know that for there's a lot of generation generational
Speaker 1: Blacks that grew up in households in which like secular
Speaker 1: music is somewhat taboo or not allowed in the household.
Speaker 2: Was your household that sort of that way or.
Speaker 3: You know, I've learned that that's the case with a
Speaker 3: lot of a lot of singers. But thank goodness. It
Speaker 3: wasn't the case at my house because my dad loved music,
Speaker 3: you know, big band, New Orleans jazz, you know, preservation jazz,
Speaker 3: R and B. So I was never pigeonholed where music
Speaker 3: was concerned. I started collecting records, you know, with the
Speaker 3: little record player in the little box with the little
Speaker 3: snap on there. I started collecting records that I guess
Speaker 3: spy ish and they never they never limited this, you know,
Speaker 3: the records I could buy.
Speaker 6: What was some of the records you were buying at
Speaker 6: that time?
Speaker 3: Oh gosh, Well, my dad had a record store on
Speaker 3: Auburn Avenue.
Speaker 2: It was with.
Speaker 3: A cab company and a moving company and an employment agency,
Speaker 3: so all one, yeah, in one building, and I yeah.
Speaker 3: It was right down the street from Big Bethel Baptist Church,
Speaker 3: and it was two blocks down from Ebeneza Baptist Church.
Speaker 3: And so I got you know, I got to sell
Speaker 3: records too, because my brother and I would come and
Speaker 3: you know and work for my dad. Sometimes I was dispatcher,
Speaker 3: you know, for the cab company, and then sometimes I
Speaker 3: saw records and it you know, it was just a
Speaker 3: whole plethora of activity that we got to do. But
Speaker 3: I don't know, I think I think selling records was
Speaker 3: the most fun for me because if somebody comes in
Speaker 3: and asks for a record that we didn't have, I
Speaker 3: had to write down the artists and and my dad
Speaker 3: would pick it up at the at There were one
Speaker 3: stops where the record stores would you know they got
Speaker 3: the uh Manu pressed records from. I think then they
Speaker 3: had a pressing plant in Canton, Georgia, and and that
Speaker 3: that's how we you know, that was the chain of
Speaker 3: command for for for doing records. I think that was
Speaker 3: the most fun, the most fun growing up. And it
Speaker 3: was down the street from the Royal Peacock. It was
Speaker 3: like two doors down from the Royal Peacock. So when
Speaker 3: artists would come to perform the Peacock, I would slip
Speaker 3: out and go see their soundchecks because the owner of
Speaker 3: the Peacock was, you know, a friend of my dad's.
Speaker 3: In fact, I remember talking to Ruth Brown and telling
Speaker 3: her that I saw her do a sound check because
Speaker 3: her son saying he was he's he's a He was
Speaker 3: a guitar player a few years ago on one of
Speaker 3: the nighttime shows and he had this amazing voice. Because
Speaker 3: he did a demo that I eventually recorded and so
Speaker 3: Ruth Brown and I got to talk because he put
Speaker 3: her on the phone and I told her, you know,
Speaker 3: I remember you, you know when when Mama Dotter mean
Speaker 3: was you know, it was a big song for her,
Speaker 3: and she loved it. She absolutely loved the fact because
Speaker 3: I was I was a little kid. Wow, Okay, wondering,
Speaker 3: aren't I?
Speaker 1: No, no, no, no, this is literally what I was about.
Speaker 1: And I'm glad you mentioned. For the longest, I couldn't
Speaker 1: figure out the proper title. So whenever I whenever people
Speaker 1: ask me about my record collection, I never knew the
Speaker 1: proper title of those dealers were called one stops. But oftentimes,
Speaker 1: like when people ask like how do you collect so
Speaker 1: many records? I think they think that I go out
Speaker 1: and actually purchased like individual like two thousand records where
Speaker 1: now you know, a lot of those owners of those
Speaker 1: one stops either they're widow widows or you know, or
Speaker 1: their family don't know what to do with them. So
Speaker 1: usually there's like thirty or forty thousand pieces lying around
Speaker 1: and then maybe a guy like me will purchase it
Speaker 1: if it seems interesting enough and that sort of.
Speaker 3: Thing, so it can get to them before the British
Speaker 3: come because they can everyone, yeah, come to America every
Speaker 3: year to you know, get the great records.
Speaker 1: You know, yeah, Japanese dealers, British people like every place,
Speaker 1: but the United States really treasure is like you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, there's some people in the United.
Speaker 2: States, but for the most part, but that's.
Speaker 4: Also interesting measures you know, how we are treasures sometimes Yeah.
Speaker 2: We're disposable country.
Speaker 1: So okay, So that makes a lot of sense to
Speaker 1: me because normally when our guests come on this show,
Speaker 1: the common denominator is that a lot of guests on
Speaker 1: the show are DJs. And that's how at least the
Speaker 1: producers that we've had on the show. So the fact
Speaker 1: that you've worked in the record store explains a lot
Speaker 1: of your you know, of your illustrious range as far
Speaker 1: as like the world of jazz, the world of soul,
Speaker 1: the world of blues, like all the music that you sing.
Speaker 4: Does it also mean like your dad was a man
Speaker 4: because like record store owners were the man in the streets, right,
Speaker 4: like they had a lot of respect and access and whatnot.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, the street that my dad's business was on,
Speaker 3: Auburn Avenue, was the seat for that part of town
Speaker 3: of black business. In fact, okay, Gladys Knight's sponsor, mister
Speaker 3: Alexander TM Alexander was was his his realty company. He
Speaker 3: and mister Calloway's realty company was right down the three
Speaker 3: doors down from you know, from from my dad's business.
Speaker 3: And and I remember, you know, we knew from the
Speaker 3: inside that that TM was Gladys Knight's sponsor, and I
Speaker 3: knew of her and then I got to see her
Speaker 3: on Ted Max's original Amateur Hour. Yeah, yeah, I remember
Speaker 3: the first time we got a request for for their
Speaker 3: record because I had to write it down, you know,
Speaker 3: it was every beat of my heart. And on the
Speaker 3: on the b side was Darling, which was only the Pips. Okay, okay, yeah,
Speaker 3: and Darling Darling was just the Pips and on the
Speaker 3: other side was Gladys Knight and the Pips. So yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: but I didn't know that was part of the hierarchy
Speaker 3: that you know, record company owners were the man in
Speaker 3: the street because there were businesses all the way down
Speaker 3: the street on the Auburn Avenue.
Speaker 2: How long did he keep that business up? What was
Speaker 2: that a majority of your life?
Speaker 3: Or I remember when I was twelve, that was when
Speaker 3: when I ordered Darling. I must have been twelve then
Speaker 3: and as a then up up to to a teenagehood,
Speaker 3: I performed at Big Bethel Baptist Church, which is, like
Speaker 3: I said, two blocks down from Wheat Street Baptist Church
Speaker 3: and one blockdown from Ebniza Baptist Church, which was Doctor
Speaker 3: King's church.
Speaker 2: So did you ever get to see him in person,
Speaker 2: to see who doctor King?
Speaker 3: Oh? Yeah yeah. In fact, my brother, doctor King, my
Speaker 3: dad had a cab stand, you know, at Big Bethel
Speaker 3: Baptist Church, and that's where you pay for slots for
Speaker 3: your cabs to sit, so that after church, after choir, rehearsal,
Speaker 3: all those places, all those events, people can come out
Speaker 3: of the church and the cabs waiting. They're like like
Speaker 3: they do at the airport.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: And but Doctor King could park anywhere. And my brother,
Speaker 3: my brother used to used to wait for him to
Speaker 3: park at when he would park at at Big Bethel,
Speaker 3: and he would walk him down to Blackstabniza because he
Speaker 3: was you know, he was now he was the man.
Speaker 3: And I remember my brother was so thrilled because this
Speaker 3: was before a couple of weeks before the march on Washington. Okay,
Speaker 3: and my brother, I mean He was literally shaking when
Speaker 3: he told us about the fact that doctor King had
Speaker 3: told him where to meet them, to be on the
Speaker 3: bus to go to the march on Washington. So yeah,
Speaker 3: to answer your question.
Speaker 2: Wow, you got to see him, that's incredible.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yes, yes. After he he passed away, I
Speaker 3: did numerous misiness King would call on me to do,
Speaker 3: to do numerous activities, sing it, you know, on on
Speaker 3: ecumenical Sunday when they would you know, honor him and
Speaker 3: to sing, you know, at the church at Stetra. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 3: and she invited me to the second March on Washington.
Speaker 1: Your vocal style like you have a very very rich,
Speaker 1: rich rich tenor yes, you've can sing the highest of
Speaker 1: the highs and the lowest of the lows. Who was
Speaker 1: your inspiration as far as like, hm, your your singing style?
Speaker 2: Who did you gravitate towards?
Speaker 3: Oh? It was different periods of my life, you know.
Speaker 3: I was influenced by by various and sundry singers and
Speaker 3: horn players and keyboard players. I remember seeing Aretha. She
Speaker 3: was traveling with her father, Reverend C. L. Franklin, and
Speaker 3: she they were at the City Auditorium, which belongs to
Speaker 3: Georgia State. Now uh and and she she sang a
Speaker 3: song called in a Land where Will Never Grow Old?
Speaker 3: And by then I was playing piano for church choirs.
Speaker 3: So I put that in my in my repertoire and
Speaker 3: always remembered her for that song, and I sung it
Speaker 3: at funerals from like I said, from time I was
Speaker 3: an early teenager till till I guess a couple of
Speaker 3: years ago I staying at a funeral as well.
Speaker 2: So you were just the go to person.
Speaker 3: I guess. But Atlanta was so full of wonderful singers.
Speaker 3: Whoa yeah, I was just one of the among so
Speaker 3: many extremely talented.
Speaker 1: For were you at all somewhat hobnobbing or crossing paths
Speaker 1: with any other future legends that we might have known
Speaker 1: known of at the time period?
Speaker 3: Well, let's see, did you never think of it that way? Right?
Speaker 4: Or who started out? That's what I was just thinking,
Speaker 4: like when you were in Atlanta?
Speaker 2: Who?
Speaker 4: Who were the singers in Atlanta?
Speaker 3: Well there were lots of blues singers. Okay, the tams
Speaker 3: as we stroll along to get the times, Oh oh
Speaker 3: that's the times. But Atlanta, that's my uncle.
Speaker 1: Billie Billy Jackson Billy Jackson who produced that song.
Speaker 2: That's that's one of my uncles.
Speaker 3: Last night I did with with where Billy Paul performed.
Speaker 3: It was in London. The Times were on there, okay,
Speaker 3: but I think the Tams were an Atlanta group, but
Speaker 3: I gave them the wrong song.
Speaker 2: The Times of Philadelphia.
Speaker 3: Okay, the Times of Philadelphia and yeah, what kind of
Speaker 3: food do you think I am? Yeah, yeah, that's them.
Speaker 2: Yeah okay.
Speaker 1: But for you, though, like when did you? Was it
Speaker 1: a thing where you just out the womb singing or
Speaker 1: like what what? How old were you when you've made
Speaker 1: the decision that this was going to be your profession,
Speaker 1: this was going to be your your calling.
Speaker 3: You know. I guess I never really made that kind
Speaker 3: of decision, because I do. I did sing, my mother
Speaker 3: said before before I could remember. I remember vaguely some
Speaker 3: of the little concerts I did for folks that would
Speaker 3: visit us, you know, relatives and stuff.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 3: And I remember being in the church choir and singing
Speaker 3: solo before the church choir. But I never made a decision.
Speaker 3: It was I guess it was.
Speaker 4: Even in college, right, like even in college you were
Speaker 4: you were singing.
Speaker 3: It was made the decision was made for me because
Speaker 3: I got scholarships, you know, for music scholarships and academic scholarship.
Speaker 3: The school that I chose, Mars Brown, I got a
Speaker 3: scholarship for academics and I got one a vocal scholarship,
Speaker 3: a music scholarship. So I was going to be doing
Speaker 3: that for the rest of my life. Whether I knew
Speaker 3: it or not, I never made a decision. I think
Speaker 3: it was just God.
Speaker 1: I hear another thing that we have in common that
Speaker 1: you and I would have been former Juilliard students.
Speaker 2: But yeah, we had a different calling. So what was
Speaker 2: your decision to not go to Juilliard.
Speaker 3: I fell in love with Doug carn and we eloped
Speaker 3: to Hollywood and got married and that's when we.
Speaker 2: Owe you guys, I did that.
Speaker 3: You well, no, we were just know, we were late teens,
Speaker 3: but we started the family, you know. I was twenty Okay, wow,
Speaker 3: So you had that that kind of fate as well.
Speaker 2: Uh, yeah, I was.
Speaker 1: At least my dad planned on me going to either
Speaker 1: Juilliard or Curtis. He wanted me to be in classical
Speaker 1: music because he thought that was that's what folks thought respectable, irrespectable,
Speaker 1: our form.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because I sang classically. You know all the major arias,
Speaker 3: and you know the Messiah and seven last Words, and
Speaker 3: and and so it was it was understood that I
Speaker 3: would probably teach music in a college.
Speaker 4: What is this Russian thing? I'm sorry, I know that's
Speaker 4: in there too. I did not know this about you.
Speaker 4: That that started early on when you were younger too,
Speaker 4: the Russian singing.
Speaker 3: I we were on a in high school. We were
Speaker 3: on a in a special experimental program of program of
Speaker 3: study in high school, and our foreign language was Russian.
Speaker 3: So I took Russian all during high school. Then when
Speaker 3: I went to Morris Brown that was the first year
Speaker 3: they had a Russian course. So I did three years
Speaker 3: in high school and then two years at marsh Brown.
Speaker 3: So and you speaking proficiently for me too? I used to.
Speaker 4: Same, you do, a mayor, you speak Russian proficiently.
Speaker 2: In the first grade. The only thing I remember now is.
Speaker 4: Okay, what did she say, a mire?
Speaker 2: What she said, dude? That was forty five years ago.
Speaker 1: The type of school I went to, we learned four
Speaker 1: or five languages we had to know, like from first
Speaker 1: to fourth grade, I was fluent in French, Russian, Spanish, Latin, English,
Speaker 1: and ebonics.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a good answer. Yes it is hot, Yes.
Speaker 3: That's yeah.
Speaker 4: I'm just fascinated. Like most people take Spanish in French
Speaker 4: day whole life, they're still not proficient. Y'all take it
Speaker 4: for three four five years, and it's like.
Speaker 3: Yo, well, I got a little proficiency in some languages
Speaker 3: because when when I perform in you know, in France
Speaker 3: or in Spain or or elsewhere, I would get get
Speaker 3: I had Burlet's books and cassettes, and I would learn
Speaker 3: to you know, to talk to the audience, introduce songs,
Speaker 3: uh through through my my books and my cassette tapes,
Speaker 3: so that in fact, my my second husband thought I
Speaker 3: was fluent in Spanish and Russian and and and and
Speaker 3: and French and and he in fact, he's told people
Speaker 3: I was fluent in those other languages. But I could
Speaker 3: just you know, I could order food, I could introduce
Speaker 3: my songs, I could ask for directions, because I I
Speaker 3: didn't want to be anywhere where I was that compromised.
Speaker 3: So I always learned proficient, you know, just travel travel
Speaker 3: French or travel Spanish.
Speaker 2: So you were always prepared.
Speaker 3: I tried to be Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1: In in your high school years or you know, did
Speaker 1: you have any sort of alliances at all with like
Speaker 1: pop music or just modern soul music at all?
Speaker 3: Oh? Yeah, yeah, absolutely, I loved I loved R and B.
Speaker 3: In fact, I just found out yesterday from Laia that
Speaker 3: le Andrews was.
Speaker 2: Your father, my dad.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's amazinging.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's my dad. That's not that.
Speaker 1: Actually here, here's here's here's a minor fun fact. We're
Speaker 1: jumping way into the timeline. But you know, I I
Speaker 1: he basically ushered me into show business because you know,
Speaker 1: by twelve I became his band leader. But I'll say
Speaker 1: that my very first professional gig non nepotism.
Speaker 4: You Gene carn.
Speaker 1: Kaw, So you had you had a musical director named
Speaker 1: Donald Dumpson.
Speaker 3: Donald was was a sort of a prodigy. Yeah, because
Speaker 3: he could yet because when we do places like like
Speaker 3: Carnegie Hall and Avery Fisher Hall, I could throw in
Speaker 3: an aria because Donald was proficient at you know, he
Speaker 3: knew all the arias. In fact, I remember when Pavarotti
Speaker 3: came to Philadelphia, Donald was the pianist that he asked for.
Speaker 3: When Donald Jompson was still.
Speaker 2: Is the man mister Dumpson.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, I was going to say and so I went
Speaker 1: to the high school Creative and Performing Arts. Now, the
Speaker 1: thing is, when I when I thought about it this morning,
Speaker 1: that is highly that's a highly unusual request. Like I'm
Speaker 1: trying to figure out. I mean, I get I get
Speaker 1: miffed when my band asks of me to like let
Speaker 1: an established artist spit a hot sixteen or twenty four
Speaker 1: over so you know what I mean, like blah blah
Speaker 1: blah's in the audience, let him get on the microphone.
Speaker 2: And yet all I remember.
Speaker 1: Was that mister Dumpson was going to have three of
Speaker 1: his choir students and me and I think at the
Speaker 1: time it was supposed to be me and Christian McBride,
Speaker 1: but I think Christian couldn't make it, so only I
Speaker 1: could drum, and we were going to be like special guests.
Speaker 1: Were you did a I think we had to play
Speaker 1: free by Denise Williams.
Speaker 2: Wow, and we backed you up. And I was.
Speaker 1: Thinking, like how that must have been an unusual request
Speaker 1: because I'm trying to figure out, like how did he
Speaker 1: how did he even.
Speaker 2: Make that happen?
Speaker 1: Like yo, okay, uh, miss carn I got you know,
Speaker 1: students at my high school, we're doing this gig can
Speaker 1: they come up and sing a song with you, like
Speaker 1: you didn't have to say yes, and yet you did.
Speaker 3: I always welcome anybody owned to my mic.
Speaker 1: See that's really bad because even established rappers I won't
Speaker 1: let them.
Speaker 4: But she's a natural born educator too.
Speaker 3: That's personal. Then that's personal.
Speaker 2: I get it.
Speaker 3: Touche. But Donald did the same thing with Boys to Men.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm.
Speaker 1: Actually, at the time, Mark Nelson was one of the
Speaker 1: three Tamika Patten who at the time, like Tamika Patten
Speaker 1: was was you know, she's the not what still amazing singer,
Speaker 1: gospel singer. I believe that at the time she just
Speaker 1: signed to Manhattan Records when it was on Capitol and
Speaker 1: then wow yeah yeah, Mark Mark Nelson, who was still
Speaker 1: in Boys to Men at the time, was the second singer.
Speaker 1: And uh, I believe for Dean Brown, who's like gospel
Speaker 1: legend singer extraordinaire, like she was the third singer. But
Speaker 1: I remember you you had a van. You picked us
Speaker 1: up from school. We remember hers and free all day?
Speaker 4: Is she picking you up from school?
Speaker 2: Why is jan?
Speaker 3: Do you know whose car that was that van?
Speaker 4: Whose van was it?
Speaker 3: It was red? Wasn't it it was?
Speaker 2: I believe it's a red Yes, it was a red van.
Speaker 3: Yes, that was Deanna Williams car.
Speaker 2: Wow that's crazy now.
Speaker 3: Didn't I hear Deanna say that you used to be
Speaker 3: her assistant for her?
Speaker 2: I was, I am, Yeah, absolutely, we.
Speaker 4: Met, we met it, I am, that's where I met him. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I am.
Speaker 1: I want to thank you for making that the most
Speaker 1: normal way of you telling that.
Speaker 2: Story, because yeah, I did.
Speaker 3: I was.
Speaker 4: I just left it there.
Speaker 7: Thank you anyway, life, Yes, absolutely, but no, I want
Speaker 7: to thank you for that, like I've only I can say.
Speaker 2: You know you were You were my first gig.
Speaker 1: H Philip Simon was my second, and I think I
Speaker 1: forget my last gig was before I got a record deal.
Speaker 2: But you were definitely very encouraging, very nurturing. It was easy.
Speaker 3: You were not you alive.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I got. I'm serious.
Speaker 3: This was not fuzzy.
Speaker 2: I'll be honest with you.
Speaker 1: You know, at that time, I think back when I
Speaker 1: was following my dad's path for me. You know, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go to college, I'm gonna go to Juilliard.
Speaker 1: Like in his mind, he wanted me to be somewhere between,
Speaker 1: like the next Bernard Purty, like the in demand session drummer.
Speaker 3: And pretty pretty purty, pretty.
Speaker 1: Pretty yeah, And basically in his mind like you know,
Speaker 1: if I, if I get a job with an orchestra,
Speaker 1: like if you're if you're good, then you can easily
Speaker 1: you know, you can make six figures a year, and
Speaker 1: you know you can work your way up to one
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year.
Speaker 2: Mere like it met to him, was like true, but
Speaker 2: now I'm watching letters, right, I was like, talk, I'm
Speaker 2: trying to make that a night like not a r Yeah.
Speaker 1: So, first of all, was your work with your former
Speaker 1: husband Doug? Was that your your first for ray and
Speaker 1: two like the Professional Singing.
Speaker 2: World or were you recording before that or.
Speaker 3: That was my second foray if you will, because okay,
Speaker 3: after Doug and I when we eloped, we ended up
Speaker 3: in Hollywood in the same building, well complex. It was
Speaker 3: an apartment hotel complex. As earth went and fire. They
Speaker 3: had come from Chicago. They made that sojourn west and
Speaker 3: we all lived in the same apartment hotel complex and
Speaker 3: everything surrounded the pool. It was hotel or it was apartment.
Speaker 3: You could stay for a day, could stay for a year.
Speaker 3: You had made service and the residence manager. The guy's
Speaker 3: front desk had been on on gun smoke. So most
Speaker 3: of the folks he let in there were entertainers, right, Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 3: I met everybody from Reverend Ike to In fact, he
Speaker 3: I subbed for his his piano organists he came to Atlanta.
Speaker 3: I was, I was. I was a teenager then, and
Speaker 3: I subbed for his his organist pianists when he came
Speaker 3: to Atlanta. You know they had those those tent things, Yeah,
Speaker 3: those revival revivals.
Speaker 1: Can you explain to our listeners who Reverend Ike was,
Speaker 1: because right about now there's like, yo, straight up, straight
Speaker 1: up okay, so are right now the only connection to
Speaker 1: Reverend Ike that most New Yorkers have is his former
Speaker 1: church is still way up in the heights, like right
Speaker 1: before the Bronx. And so whenever a venue like Radio
Speaker 1: City Music Hall is out of commission, then you're going
Speaker 1: to have to go to what was formerly known as
Speaker 1: Reverend Ike's Church, which is like this large, sprawling building
Speaker 1: that can hold about maybe seven to eight thousand people.
Speaker 2: So it's kind of weird.
Speaker 1: Like there's a point where Radio City Music Hall was
Speaker 1: shut down for like two months, so like in order
Speaker 1: to see like Adele or bonnie Ver, like you would
Speaker 1: have to go to the Bronx or to the Heights
Speaker 1: to go see them. At Reverend Ike's former church and people,
Speaker 1: you know, some of those photos are still up, so
Speaker 1: I would just listen to comments of them trying to
Speaker 1: figure out, like wait, are we in a black church?
Speaker 2: Like what right?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: Why are we seeing like a rock show there? But
Speaker 1: can you explain who Reverend Ike was to those that
Speaker 1: don't know.
Speaker 3: Well, he was a angelust and his his philosophy was prosperity,
Speaker 3: a prosperity philosophy, and he traveled all over the country, uh,
Speaker 3: doing his his crusades, if you will, usually in in
Speaker 3: a big you know, in a big covered tent style,
Speaker 3: or sometimes they did him in large auditoriums. And I
Speaker 3: you know, everybody knew his name because he was just
Speaker 3: very flamboyant. In fact, he lived at our for a
Speaker 3: good part of a week in our complex, and so
Speaker 3: everybody got to see him with you know, he would
Speaker 3: come out with his guards, you know, and you have
Speaker 3: to walk the length of the pool to get to
Speaker 3: the front to the front office to go outside. He
Speaker 3: was a star. He was an oddity. If you will
Speaker 3: because he you know, he had full length I mean
Speaker 3: coats and stuff and and bodyguards and stuff.
Speaker 2: Was he a pimpho? I mean I pictured Daddy rich Richard.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's on a mega church level.
Speaker 4: Yeah, a real question of Meir? Was that a real
Speaker 4: question that you was.
Speaker 2: A real question? Well? I meant because when I say
Speaker 2: photos of Reverend, I like his hair was laid back.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, you know he was fried, died and laid
Speaker 3: inside and and he was very flamboyant.
Speaker 1: You were saying that your work with with Doug was
Speaker 1: your second, fore rade, what was your first as far
Speaker 1: as recording?
Speaker 3: Okay, Uh, Doug and I were our whole philosophy was
Speaker 3: two to put lyrics to a lot of our favorite
Speaker 3: jazz classics.
Speaker 2: Vocalist.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, because I knew all the melodies. I knew
Speaker 3: the intros, I knew the heads and the songs, and uh,
Speaker 3: you know, I was staying with the you know, with
Speaker 3: the whole. These are our records, you know, home, so
Speaker 3: we put lyrics to those, to those classics acknowledgmental love, supreme.
Speaker 2: Wou'd you study the solos as well?
Speaker 3: Oh? Yeah, I did the solos note for note for note,
Speaker 3: Wayne Shorter, who just passed away, infinized his title tune
Speaker 3: of our first album, Wow, Horace Silver Peace, we put
Speaker 3: lyrics to Peace. In fact, Horrace put lyrics to Peace
Speaker 3: and Doug took it before we moved to New York.
Speaker 3: Doug took our version, went to New York to show
Speaker 3: Horace you know what we had done with it, because
Speaker 3: he liked to get permission. Andy Bay did the lyrics
Speaker 3: on on Horrace Silver's version of Peace.
Speaker 1: I was going to ask you when when you do
Speaker 1: that do you have because I've heard like like Eddie
Speaker 1: Jefferson might have a version of a particular song, and
Speaker 1: then like John Hendricks might have his version of a
Speaker 1: particular song. So right, So is like, once lyrics get
Speaker 1: applied to a song, are those the definitive lyrics or
Speaker 1: is there just a world? Is there a rule in
Speaker 1: jazz that a vocal easee artist can add their interpretations
Speaker 1: of what they think that song should be lyrically at least?
Speaker 3: Well, I don't know what the what the rule is,
Speaker 3: but I know on the credits Doug's name was added
Speaker 3: as you know as writer. Okay, So I don't know
Speaker 3: what the rules are, but he wanted to give the
Speaker 3: Lee Morgan, he was gonna we put lyrics to search
Speaker 3: for the New Land, right, Okay.
Speaker 4: This is this album with this beautiful afro with you
Speaker 4: and Jeanie.
Speaker 3: Is this the you know we took that picture? Oh no,
Speaker 3: not the not the one with Jeannie. But there was
Speaker 3: one of the It was a promo picture. I don't
Speaker 3: think it was an album cover. A promo picture we took.
Speaker 3: We took in a in a Japanese garden and it
Speaker 3: was in Philly. I'd love to know where that.
Speaker 4: Maybe it was in Fairmount Park at the Japanese House.
Speaker 3: Maybe Doug is ready to fly to to New York.
Speaker 3: Morgan was performing at Slugs, the small jazz club in
Speaker 3: the village that had peanuts shells on the floor. It
Speaker 3: was famous for that. And that was the week that
Speaker 3: Lee Morgan's wife and blew him away.
Speaker 4: Yes yeah, documentary please, yes, yes, cool? Yeah, I know
Speaker 4: if you noticed that. Yeah, he said, he has one
Speaker 4: of the only people who took a photo of Helen. Helen,
Speaker 4: my dad's in a documentary. He has his photo and
Speaker 4: he is commentating in it. Because when Helen went to jail,
Speaker 4: she called him wow wow. Because the whole story about
Speaker 4: Helen Morgan is she didn't stay in jail for too long,
Speaker 4: even though she killed a man in front of a
Speaker 4: bunch of people.
Speaker 3: She sure had witnesses.
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, she did, Yes she did.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, because I think Leon Thomas was singing on
Speaker 3: that gig, you know, creator as a master plan. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 3: because he did that fair.
Speaker 2: The yodel thing. He would do the yodeling.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you know he said he learned that yodeling
Speaker 3: from listening to recordings of Pigmy rich African Pigmy rituals.
Speaker 3: What really, Yeah, that's what Leon told me.
Speaker 4: I've never heard us get credited for yodeling. I've never
Speaker 4: heard black people get credited for.
Speaker 3: The yodling that Leon banjo yodling. It wasn't. It wasn't
Speaker 3: in the mountains in West Virginia yodeling. It was. It
Speaker 3: was this yodling where at times it sounded like he
Speaker 3: was singing two notes, like like layla hathaway, can do hathaway? Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 3: So his was not your your typical West Virginia yodling
Speaker 3: right under no circumstances. Yeah, it was almost it was mystical.
Speaker 1: So at the time that you moved to Hollywood, you know,
Speaker 1: what are your impressions?
Speaker 2: You mentioned earth Wind and Fire.
Speaker 1: I assume that this is the time that they also
Speaker 1: were working on Sweet Sweetbacks first album there very after
Speaker 1: Sweet Sweetback, or that when they signed the columb.
Speaker 3: Was this was before Sweet Back because their first album
Speaker 3: they want Warner Brothers right for the first two albums,
Speaker 3: the Need of Love and earth Wind and Fire right.
Speaker 3: And one day I was rehearsing lyrics that Doug and
Speaker 3: I had put to infantize to one of the one
Speaker 3: of the tunes on maybe it was, I don't remember
Speaker 3: which song, but Maurice knocked on the door. We lived
Speaker 3: upstairs and everybody had a patio. Uh, and you know
Speaker 3: you never closed, you know, close your sliding class doors.
Speaker 3: And so Maurice introduced himself. Because this dand never recorded either,
Speaker 3: he introduced himself. He said, I heard the voice of
Speaker 3: an angel, and I followed it up the stairs, and
Speaker 3: then he introduced himself, you know, to me.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: And he came back after Doug got home, and I
Speaker 3: told him you got to you got to meet, you know,
Speaker 3: meet my husband. And it was that meeting that made
Speaker 3: Maurice invite both me and Doug to record on the
Speaker 3: first two albums at Sunset Sound. That was first studio
Speaker 3: I've ever recorded in because that was the only one
Speaker 3: I knew about. Doug has done an album on Savoy
Speaker 3: when he was a teenager, an organ album on Savoy
Speaker 3: Records when he was a teenager. But I never recorded
Speaker 3: before except there was Okay, there was an album that
Speaker 3: Maurris Brown did about choir. It's called Oh Clap Your Hands,
Speaker 3: and I would love to have a copy. You know,
Speaker 3: it's a thirty three and it was called old Clap
Speaker 3: your Hands. If anybody out there has you know, has
Speaker 3: a copy or.
Speaker 2: Just just already order, I got you.
Speaker 3: Oh thank you? That would that would complete my life.
Speaker 3: I think, you know, if I could.
Speaker 2: Get I come to you. Bruh. Jeane Brown confined anything.
Speaker 3: Yes, okay, but that's what why Doug and I ended
Speaker 3: up recording Infinitized in Kelli, you know, in Hollywood at
Speaker 3: Sunset Sounds, because that was the studio at the time. Yes,
Speaker 3: that's where Maurice did those two albums.
Speaker 2: Did you guys own the Black Jazz label or.
Speaker 3: I've read that that Doug was president of Black Jazz Records.
Speaker 3: Gene Russell, a musician himself, started that label, and Doug
Speaker 3: was approached by Jean for us to you know, for
Speaker 3: us to come and sign with them. Yes, he was
Speaker 3: the head of Black Jazz Records, and Black Jazz Records
Speaker 3: was a division of Ovation Records. Dick Shorey out of
Speaker 3: Chicago was the head of the parent company, Ovation Records,
Speaker 3: and Black Jazz was a you know, a custom label,
Speaker 3: so Doug never never owned it. And I ended up
Speaker 3: not signing with them because Russell offered both of us
Speaker 3: a contract. But but Doug thought, well, let's see how
Speaker 3: he treats him, because the like the first album, I
Speaker 3: think on subsequent pressings they put my name on it,
Speaker 3: but it was just Doug Corn infinized and subsequent pressing
Speaker 3: state featuring the voice of Gene Corn. Yeah, And Doug said, well,
Speaker 3: let's see how he treats me, and then you know,
Speaker 3: if this first record you know, works okay, then you know,
Speaker 3: then I would I would sign. But we you know,
Speaker 3: we broke up and got divorced there so but we did.
Speaker 3: We did three albums and then Doug did a population
Speaker 3: like after after I left the group when I went
Speaker 3: with because I went with Norman Connors performance wise, and
Speaker 3: I produced the vocals on all of his all of
Speaker 3: his his albums.
Speaker 2: That's how I.
Speaker 3: Got to work with and vocal coach Phillis, because Phillis
Speaker 3: used so many of my musicians. It was so cool,
Speaker 3: you know it was she didn't even even have to
Speaker 3: ask after a while, you know, my horn players. She
Speaker 3: she just loved, loved my musicians, and I got to
Speaker 3: work with her vocally. She said, Amir, you'll appreciate this.
Speaker 3: She said that she had no lower register. What until
Speaker 3: she heard Infinite. She said that let her know she
Speaker 3: had the developer and she did it on her own.
Speaker 3: She developed this lower register on her own. Yeah, she said,
Speaker 3: because there's a line and infantized and always keep them
Speaker 3: in your heart for love, well, teaching, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 3: And she said that line from Infantized was her inspiration
Speaker 3: and her incentive to develop a lower register. And she
Speaker 3: really she did a great job because I worked with,
Speaker 3: you know, with her on all of the albums that
Speaker 3: Norman Connor has produced on her and and the ones
Speaker 3: that she sang on, uh, the songs that she sang
Speaker 3: on on Norman's albums. Okay, yeah, you.
Speaker 1: Know when I when when we had those records, I
Speaker 1: was five six years old, so naturally I thought Norman
Speaker 1: Conness was the singer, not knowing like Michael Henderson all.
Speaker 3: The everybody did everybody.
Speaker 1: However, I got to ask you, now, were you there
Speaker 1: for the uh so Much Love sessions?
Speaker 3: Which song you're talking about?
Speaker 1: So all right, so there's so one thing you're going
Speaker 1: to know about me is while people are into the hits,
Speaker 1: I'm a guy that's.
Speaker 2: In the filling. Yeah, I'm a cut filler guy.
Speaker 1: And so so Much Love is uh basically it's like
Speaker 1: buried at the end of side to when You Are
Speaker 1: My Starship, But it's basically him doing a drum solo,
Speaker 1: but he's also singing and kind of quasi yodeling.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it wasn't my dad's.
Speaker 1: Favorite song, but you know, I was a drummer back then,
Speaker 1: so I used to always play it. My dad was
Speaker 1: like it was still the point where it's like a
Speaker 1: mere no no much love, like no more that song.
Speaker 2: I can't take it much.
Speaker 3: But yeah, so you gotta research this. We did a
Speaker 3: cover of My Yes. Yeah, what's her name? Eleanor Mills.
Speaker 3: She was Stephanie's sister in law. Oh fabulous singer. She
Speaker 3: did the she was, you know, slated to do the
Speaker 3: vocals on the song. Norman insisted on singing that first line,
Speaker 3: that first little section until till the only I guess
Speaker 3: that's a bridge.
Speaker 1: Maybe the second part Russell's Russell's.
Speaker 3: Part exactly where Russell comes in. And you got to
Speaker 3: listen to that, and you'll now your dad didn't want
Speaker 3: you to listen to so much love right for you, Yeah,
Speaker 3: because your dad was saying that wasn't up to par
Speaker 3: for him, right right, exactly, your ad Well, of course
Speaker 3: you're dead visionary. So if you find that that tune, uh,
Speaker 3: Norman's cover of that tune he sings first, I thought
Speaker 3: he was just joking because it was like, I'm gonna
Speaker 3: you know, who are we going to get to sing?
Speaker 3: You know, first line? Pitchy is being kind? Okay, okay.
Speaker 3: It was comparable. And I love Quincy because first thing
Speaker 3: he told me when Stevie introduced me to to Quincy,
Speaker 3: Quincy said, uh, we were recording down the street from
Speaker 3: each other. Stevie came to see me in the studio
Speaker 3: and we walked down the street and Quincy was recording.
Speaker 3: This was in Burbank, maybe it was in Cali and
Speaker 3: the first thing Quincy said to me was our birthdays
Speaker 3: are a day apart. And I said, oh you so
Speaker 3: you're there by the IDEs of March because minus March
Speaker 3: fifteen and this was the fourteenth. Why thank you? Thank you.
Speaker 3: Laiah insisted that I keep celebrating for the whole month
Speaker 3: and just that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but you know.
Speaker 3: Hey, why not? Why not? Yeah? Yeah. Quincy did a
Speaker 3: section on a song that he produced on Somebody, and
Speaker 3: he and Norman were comparable two to each other, delivering
Speaker 3: a vocalow, you gotta find you make me feel drendh. Yes,
Speaker 3: I will look for it.
Speaker 2: I wilso look for it.
Speaker 3: You know what it's not.
Speaker 1: It's just hitting me now that you mentioned your relationship
Speaker 1: to Maurice. Was the earth wind and fire connection the
Speaker 1: reason why it just hit me for the first week
Speaker 1: I spent in when I moved to London. Uh, there's
Speaker 1: a DJ named Jarles Peterson. He played me.
Speaker 3: One of my favorite folks, one of my favorite.
Speaker 1: He's responsible for us getting a record deal, the Routes
Speaker 1: getting a record deal.
Speaker 2: Uh, you guys do a cover Mighty Mighty?
Speaker 1: I think on the Higher Ground album, really hip jazz
Speaker 1: version of it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And that was the album that it had some
Speaker 3: some of the stuff that was in the can, and
Speaker 3: Doug did all of that by himself after I left,
Speaker 3: you know, the group, and he found a ringer singer.
Speaker 3: Her name's Joyce Green. That was her doing the newer
Speaker 3: songs on the at Adam's Apple.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, oh okay, but that's you on Revelation correct.
Speaker 3: Oh definitely. Like I said, some of the songs which
Speaker 3: he took off of the previous album, I get it,
Speaker 3: previous three albums.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, time yeah, time, Time is running out is
Speaker 1: one of my all time favorite songs.
Speaker 2: I love this.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this is really what you can play music on
Speaker 4: this podcast.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 2: I know I'm trying to.
Speaker 4: Keep up, like I'm a I'm hit mute and listening.
Speaker 4: Oh shout out, say everybody's listening. You know, just hit
Speaker 4: pause when you need to exact these records.
Speaker 1: Yeah, sorry, Next we're gonna have to do playlists specifically
Speaker 1: for yes, all the songs you mentioned. So at the time,
Speaker 1: and considering you a serious jazz singer or a serious singer,
Speaker 1: I'm left with it. I'm left under the impression that,
Speaker 1: like serious jazz musicians try to make it happen in
Speaker 1: New York and New York sort of looks at l
Speaker 1: A as sort of like a joke when it comes
Speaker 1: to serious jazz musicianship I mean Crusaders aside or whatever.
Speaker 1: But I know that the East Coast has a very
Speaker 1: snobby and you know it is that way with hip
Speaker 1: hop as well. Like we're more intellectual, more you know,
Speaker 1: strategic with our work. But I mean for you getting
Speaker 1: getting to Hollywood, did you feel like, all right, I
Speaker 1: can make this work?
Speaker 2: Like like what were your goals?
Speaker 1: Was your goals to just be like the next Eravon
Speaker 1: or were you like, no, I want to be.
Speaker 2: On the top of the charts, or what was your
Speaker 2: personal goals? Singing?
Speaker 3: I I just like to be challenged. I just like
Speaker 3: to you know, to sing horn lined and duel with
Speaker 3: a piano and stuff. So I never I never had
Speaker 3: a had a path or anything because because on the
Speaker 3: earth went and fire stuff. I did the high high
Speaker 3: stuff because that was before Philip and before Jessica Jessica Cleaves,
Speaker 3: and you know, Patty and I decided, I guess it
Speaker 3: was one day at dinner we were saying, we're going
Speaker 3: to produce Jessica Cleves because she had the most beautiful
Speaker 3: voice on the planet, and so Patty inside said, yeah,
Speaker 3: we're going to produce Jessica Cleves, and the whole dream
Speaker 3: just went down the drain because I understand she she
Speaker 3: was married to or partners with a with a drug
Speaker 3: dealer and that, and she you know, she inspired expired
Speaker 3: behind that. But she was the first Hi singer for
Speaker 3: Earth Wind and Fire because Jim Brown, you know, the
Speaker 3: football guy, managed Earth Wind and Fire and he managed
Speaker 3: Friends of Distinction. So he took Jessica out of Friends
Speaker 3: of Distinction and put her in the Earth Wind and Fire.
Speaker 3: Stones like keep your head to the sky and stuff
Speaker 3: that was right up Maurice's valley, you know, the spirituality.
Speaker 3: In fact, he showed me what all the symbols were
Speaker 3: on all their literature album covers, on the sleeves everywhere,
Speaker 3: and there must have been maybe a dozen of them.
Speaker 3: He said, well, everybody knows, you know, knows the interpretation
Speaker 3: of these, but there were four. He said, Now, these
Speaker 3: four just you and I know. And he said, and
Speaker 3: we'll talk about these in Nirvana when I get there.
Speaker 3: We're going to have a big disguise.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's amazing.
Speaker 1: Can you tell me about the transition to you becoming
Speaker 1: your own artists where you're not working with Doug anymore
Speaker 1: and you're on your own. Can you talk about the
Speaker 1: process that glad you to start your solo career?
Speaker 3: Oh? Okay, Well, after the Revelation album, we moved to
Speaker 3: We moved to New York because we were getting offers
Speaker 3: for performances there. So we moved to New York and
Speaker 3: Doug and I were working at the Village Vanguard and
Speaker 3: Norman had just left Pharaoh Pharaoh Saunders and he was
Speaker 3: starting his own, his own group. He had his promo pictures,
Speaker 3: you know, and he came in in the Vanguard and
Speaker 3: I remember he gave me a picture and he said,
Speaker 3: I'm starting my own group. You know. After I I
Speaker 3: was totally through, you know, with Doug's situation because we
Speaker 3: split in New York. I was trying to side. I
Speaker 3: wasn't ready to go solo per se. I worked, I
Speaker 3: did a I did a short tour with Duke Ellington,
Speaker 3: and I wrote down three He was looking for a
Speaker 3: high soprano for what became his last spiritual concert. Okay,
Speaker 3: A friend of mine and I sat down and we
Speaker 3: were trying to decide who I wanted to go with okay.
Speaker 3: The choices were Dad Jones and mel Lewis, Big Band,
Speaker 3: w Rossanroland Kirk oh Wow, and Norman Connors. So and
Speaker 3: I got in touch with with all of them, I
Speaker 3: think that, and now we're going to Russia somewhere in Europe,
Speaker 3: like in a week or two weeks. I didn't even
Speaker 3: have passport at the time, and there was so much
Speaker 3: material I didn't think I could do it justice. So
Speaker 3: across them off. And then rostan And and Dorothy his
Speaker 3: wife were good friends of mine and Dougs. So I wondered,
Speaker 3: if you know, you know how when a couple breaks up.
Speaker 2: Lat who from the who gets who want the kids?
Speaker 3: Who gets the friends?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 3: So I said, I don't know, you know, but doroth
Speaker 3: Anne and I are still friends. She's amazing. So Norman
Speaker 3: Norman got it by default wise choice. Yeah, I agree,
Speaker 3: I agree, yeah, yeah, because because for vocals, you know,
Speaker 3: he became totally dependent on me to what voice, train
Speaker 3: them if need be, and take them in and and do.
Speaker 3: He would have the tracks done McKinley Jackson and did
Speaker 3: most of the arrangements, and he sometimes he would even
Speaker 3: ask if they could sound like dos and so can
Speaker 3: you make can you make him sound like like he
Speaker 3: wanted me to make eleanor Mills sound like me. Yeah, so, so.
Speaker 1: He would want you tomorph or he would leave it
Speaker 1: up to you to decide the the vocal direction of
Speaker 1: each artist.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, because he would have the tracks done and
Speaker 3: he would tell me who who the singer was gonna be,
Speaker 3: and like like you do an instrumental arrangement, you know,
Speaker 3: you know your ranges and your transpositions for your various instruments,
Speaker 3: I would become familiar with the singer and know, you know,
Speaker 3: what to do with them melodically, okay, And a lot
Speaker 3: of the backgrounds and stuff I did anyway, because it
Speaker 3: was hard to find singers, you know too, to blend
Speaker 3: and all that jazz. So he just stack it, you know,
Speaker 3: And I learned stacking. In fact, Maurice White called it
Speaker 3: moulting because they were just starting to overdob you know
Speaker 3: when they yeah, when they did when they did the
Speaker 3: first two albums, the two albums I recorded on. So yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: And I got to work with some wonderful folks, you know,
Speaker 3: Glenn Jones and and and Phyllis and and and gosh,
Speaker 3: so many and Michael Michael Michael. Yeah, at rehearsal, he'll
Speaker 3: tell because I've done numerous states with him. Uh, and
Speaker 3: he would tell the the musicians to said, yeah, you
Speaker 3: gotta listen to with carn because she taught men. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so that that was a good period. That was that
Speaker 3: was just a period of growth for me.
Speaker 4: You've mentioned this twice, but I just really need to
Speaker 4: know about how a session goes with Phyllis Hyman and
Speaker 4: how she takes direction and how what does that collaboration
Speaker 4: feel like.
Speaker 3: She gave everybody what for except me. She wouldn't even
Speaker 3: curse around me, and I never I never asked for that.
Speaker 3: But but I think, and I'm so grateful because because
Speaker 3: I you know, I I just couldn't have you know,
Speaker 3: that would have been it. We wouldn't have been friends,
Speaker 3: you know, yeah, because she she could talk like a
Speaker 3: like a platoon of soldiers. Was tough, arry, very tough.
Speaker 3: But I'm a.
Speaker 4: Feeling you didn't. You didn't have too much conflict though.
Speaker 4: I feel like you were that woman.
Speaker 3: We never did. We never did.
Speaker 4: Carriot though, like you were the person I feel like
Speaker 4: that people went to that it was. It was never
Speaker 4: a beef with Gene Carn Like you're beating with Gene Carn.
Speaker 3: How right now, I don't. I don't be.
Speaker 2: That's good to know. Hey, I have a question.
Speaker 1: So you know this, this is sort of a paradigm
Speaker 1: shift for you, well, at least in the world of jazz,
Speaker 1: especially in the mid seventies and what you're seeing a
Speaker 1: lot of quote serious jazz musicians transfer to more adult
Speaker 1: contemporary sounds or that sort of thing. I mean for
Speaker 1: Norman Connors to come from the world of Pharrell Sanders
Speaker 1: and whatnot and then start making pop hits. You know,
Speaker 1: was there any trepidation whatsoever in terms of, like, hey,
Speaker 1: we're because I always you know, when you when you
Speaker 1: see the Motown story, you hear like the Funk Brothers
Speaker 1: talk about, like a man, we're serious jazz cats, and
Speaker 1: you know, we got to play this like pop music
Speaker 1: to pay our bills. And even with James Brown's cats,
Speaker 1: like those those guys thought that, you know, we're serious
Speaker 1: jazz musicians and you know the lost this pass good money.
Speaker 2: But on the side, we're doing jazz.
Speaker 1: So for you, was there any trepidation whatsoever or was
Speaker 1: it just a natural move like okay, it's it's time
Speaker 1: to to move to the middle at least left the
Speaker 1: center and see what we can do.
Speaker 3: Uh, no trepidation at all, because I since since I
Speaker 3: was a little girl, my dad loved the big bands. Okay,
Speaker 3: so if there were if there was a big band
Speaker 3: anywhere within one hundred miles of Atlanta, my dad, my
Speaker 3: brother and I we get in the car and we
Speaker 3: find that concert. So I loved, you know, and he
Speaker 3: took My dad was from New Orleans, so so jazz,
Speaker 3: you know, preservation jazz was you know, was a mainstake
Speaker 3: where he was concerned. We played a little piano by
Speaker 3: ear and stuff, and so it was. It was all
Speaker 3: there were no lines of demarcation with me or styles,
Speaker 3: styles of music or genres and with Norman Needing going
Speaker 3: from a from Pharaoh to to pop as you call it.
Speaker 3: It was that was during the fusion era. You know,
Speaker 3: Royeers was doing fusion. They were the godbothers of fusion.
Speaker 3: So it was it was just more growth and more stretching.
Speaker 3: For me, it was it was delightful because I never
Speaker 3: liked being him then.
Speaker 1: So was it new to suddenly hear yourself on on radio?
Speaker 1: Was that like a thrilling moment or was it just
Speaker 1: a shrug like eh whatever?
Speaker 3: Oh no, it was always thrilling. Yeah. Yeah, I never
Speaker 3: listened to my product. I still don't listen to my product. What.
Speaker 3: I loved it when they played it. Because when you
Speaker 3: listen to your own stuff, do you proof listen?
Speaker 1: Only when it's time to make the next record, I
Speaker 1: will do a deep dive in like binge listen. But
Speaker 1: I don't listen to my music, just like.
Speaker 3: For relaxation, right, you don't do that, right?
Speaker 2: No, not really.
Speaker 3: So neither neither because because I'm proofing, you know, saying, oh,
Speaker 3: I should have done this, I should have you know,
Speaker 3: I should have put three more background you know, stack
Speaker 3: three more backgrounds. Because one on my motown album was
Speaker 3: it mon album? Yeah? Yeah, I did a this this
Speaker 3: tune written by Reverend Oliver wells Uh. He wrote a
Speaker 3: spiritual tune for Earth Wind and Fire. They took him
Speaker 3: on a couple of tours. And I did thirty voices.
Speaker 3: I had the engineer to bring in choir risers and
Speaker 3: and I would imitate.
Speaker 6: Altos, yeah what I.
Speaker 3: Did my own base Yeah yeah, And I did some
Speaker 3: of the voices of the elderly ladies, you know, that
Speaker 3: wore the hats every stunt Sunday who had the big
Speaker 3: wayby vibrato, the vibrato. I just remember it back, you know.
Speaker 3: And and the engineer said, this will not work because
Speaker 3: you're going to sound like thirty versions of yourself. I said, no,
Speaker 3: I have references all the way from my from twelve
Speaker 3: years old to put you know, to put down. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: which was fun. See, uh this what it wasn't on
Speaker 3: the Motown album come to think of it, it was
Speaker 3: I it's never been released, okay. It was a project
Speaker 3: that I did. It was a version of Lift Every
Speaker 3: Voice and Say that I did as a fundraiser for
Speaker 3: the Apex Museum, which is on Auburn Avenue down well,
Speaker 3: it was technically across the street from where my father's
Speaker 3: business was, and a block and two blocks from from
Speaker 3: Ebeneza Baptist and I did that for them. It was
Speaker 3: it was forty five when I did it, because I
Speaker 3: think I did it in eighty something. And then I
Speaker 3: went back to the studio and digitally remastered it. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it was no, it's a step first. And then we
Speaker 3: did it as a as a CD and it was
Speaker 3: lift Every Voice and sing and Julian Bond did a
Speaker 3: soliloquy on the flip side talking about James Weldon Johnson
Speaker 3: and his brother Rosemond Johnson, who wrote the song that's
Speaker 3: where I had the thirty voices.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, all right, so I'm ready for the story.
Speaker 1: What brings you to Philly International? What's the steps that
Speaker 1: brought you there?
Speaker 3: Okay? Eddie Green, an amazing keyboardist from Philly, one of
Speaker 3: my favorite keyboardists, got in touch with me. This was
Speaker 3: when I was still recording and performing with Norman. Norman
Speaker 3: Connors got in touch with me and said that he
Speaker 3: he was calling me for getting in touch for Kenny
Speaker 3: Gamble and he wanted me to come to Philly and
Speaker 3: talked to you know, they wanted to talk to me
Speaker 3: about joining the label because I had been I performed
Speaker 3: in Philly at the Bes You and places before that,
Speaker 3: you know, because although I wasn't a soloist as such,
Speaker 3: but I had an audience somehow, because I remember seeing
Speaker 3: Larry Maggott at a at an event. This was just
Speaker 3: before the pandemic, and he was talking about you know
Speaker 3: how I guess I had well, I know I have pictures.
Speaker 3: I think he said he had pictures of when Patty
Speaker 3: came to sit in with me and Abie Leverte. So
Speaker 3: I went to Philly to the three oh nine, Uh,
Speaker 3: to the label. Yeah, yeah, oh we're they're doing Bio
Speaker 3: Pick and we got to go there. They interviewed a
Speaker 3: lot of the former artists and we did it in
Speaker 3: three oh nine, which is now a hotel.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I didn't.
Speaker 4: I read went over the whole Oh.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, because for a long time, every time I
Speaker 3: passed by there, you know, first there was a big
Speaker 3: hole in the ground and I would just cry because
Speaker 3: you know, that was my history.
Speaker 4: And yeah, this is the recent documentary, right, this is
Speaker 4: the Sam polar Uh don't.
Speaker 3: I don't know when it's coming out. I think they're
Speaker 3: gonna that's what it is, yeah, because they're going to
Speaker 3: add some more to it. And strangely, when when I
Speaker 3: did my my interview, my my godson, Gamble's son, Kalise,
Speaker 3: his first born was the camera guy. I'm proud of that,
Speaker 3: of course. Uh, but during my entire interview, I my
Speaker 3: voice trembled and and I thought it did and then
Speaker 3: I and I didn't realize that was really the case
Speaker 3: until we finished. They they put me in my car downstairs,
Speaker 3: and I answered my phone and and the voice and
Speaker 3: the tremble was gone. So I don't know if there
Speaker 3: were visitations there or not, because because I was wondering,
Speaker 3: am I gonna feel teddy? You know? You know any
Speaker 3: of those Yeah, any of those folks that you know
Speaker 3: that I got started in the business with, you know,
Speaker 3: who were my buddies. So yeah, okay, what what was
Speaker 3: I answering? I digressed?
Speaker 2: No no, no, no, no brought you?
Speaker 3: Okay. I get there to talk to meet with Gamble.
Speaker 3: It was on the night of an Ali fight ac
Speaker 3: everybody had left the building and we were going to
Speaker 3: talk for fifteen minutes, and Gamble was going to you know,
Speaker 3: I don't know how it's going to get there. But
Speaker 3: then I, you know, I never I don't like fights,
Speaker 3: you know, boxing, any of that stuff, bustling, boxing and
Speaker 3: wrestling and stuff not my stick. So but we ended
Speaker 3: up talking through the whole match and and I dare
Speaker 3: say that was one of the best decisions I've ever made,
Speaker 3: because it was it was it was magic. It was magic.
Speaker 2: So what is the process now?
Speaker 1: I mean, at this time, you're joining the label in
Speaker 1: seventy six, when they're at you know, when they're at
Speaker 1: the true height of their powers.
Speaker 2: So what's the.
Speaker 1: I guess, you know when you join is can he
Speaker 1: run us through? Like the process? Like is there an
Speaker 1: an r is there the person? Like are you deciding
Speaker 1: which songs you want to sing from them? Are they like, hey,
Speaker 1: we have a song for you. Are you allowed to
Speaker 1: say I don't.
Speaker 2: Like that one?
Speaker 1: Or you know, can we change this? Like how much
Speaker 1: leverage do you have in terms of you being an
Speaker 1: artist there or are you just on the conveyor belt
Speaker 1: of proven hip makers.
Speaker 3: Well it was there was total respect Gamble. Gamble respected
Speaker 3: my musicianship. And in the building there were the producers,
Speaker 3: the writers, you know mcdann and Whitehead, Dexter, Wan Cell,
Speaker 3: Linda Creed and Tom Bell whom we just lost. And
Speaker 3: when I get there, Gamble would tell me, you know,
Speaker 3: first of all, don't sing anything that you don't want
Speaker 3: to sing. Don't be goaded into you know, are persuaded.
Speaker 3: You know, you know what works for you, you know
Speaker 3: what what fulfills you, you know what works with your philosophies.
Speaker 3: And so I would go to they will have written
Speaker 3: stuff for you, like McFaddens my that they would present
Speaker 3: their songs with magic. I mean they were they were
Speaker 3: fabulous dancers and pulling the flowers out of the sleeves.
Speaker 6: They were selling it.
Speaker 3: They were, they were, they were a riot. I just
Speaker 3: adore them. Yeah, and each of the producers who had
Speaker 3: written for you, composers who had written for you in
Speaker 3: their songs, and and you know, I'm there for probably
Speaker 3: a month maybe more, just doing songs, and and I
Speaker 3: over recorded, so there's still stuff in the can, maybe
Speaker 3: a couple of albums in the can. Because and when
Speaker 3: the tunes that that Kenny and Leon wrote for me,
Speaker 3: when we first started, they were in the in the room,
Speaker 3: you know, in the boardroom while I, you know, while
Speaker 3: I did the did the songs, while I recorded the song.
Speaker 3: After that they let me do the recordings. And then
Speaker 3: either they bring in we'd bring in Barbara and Evett
Speaker 3: and and Carla the sweeties, uh right to do the backgrounds.
Speaker 3: Or I would stack the backgrounds. And when I when
Speaker 3: I was finished, I would taken in the office and
Speaker 3: let you know, let Kenny or call them in the
Speaker 3: in the in the studio and let them them hear,
Speaker 3: you know, what they what I'd done on this song.
Speaker 3: And and give me a critique and it and it
Speaker 3: went like that.
Speaker 1: One of my favorite songs on uh your Philly debut
Speaker 1: record was a no laughing matter?
Speaker 3: Wow? Yeah?
Speaker 2: What like? So, what what are your memories of just
Speaker 2: that first album?
Speaker 3: Like it was it was an adventure. I remember the
Speaker 3: tunes that Dexter did were all experimental.
Speaker 1: Can you talk about him as a producer, because I
Speaker 1: don't think many people know that. Yeah, Dexter Jel was
Speaker 1: really like a futuristic I always felt like being under
Speaker 1: that that umbrella of Philly International almost limited him a
Speaker 1: bit because what I knew of what he was capable of, Like,
Speaker 1: you know, he really wanted to be like afro futurist,
Speaker 1: damn your.
Speaker 2: Son raw level of yes, experimentation, but they they.
Speaker 1: Honed them back a little bit. But if you listen
Speaker 1: to like a lot of the solo stuff on his records,
Speaker 1: you can see that. But he described him as like
Speaker 1: as a producer and a musician, Dexter.
Speaker 3: Was is a visionary, truly a musical visionary. Because you
Speaker 3: remember songs like life on Mars. Yes, he's been he's
Speaker 3: been telling telling the world that there's a life on Mars.
Speaker 3: For what fifty years now, right right, Yeah, his song
Speaker 3: should be played for all the launchings, should be a
Speaker 3: part of the music that they that the astronauts here
Speaker 3: when they go into outer space. He was just just,
Speaker 3: what is such a genius? It's amazing, Like, Okay, when
Speaker 3: when they did when he and Cynthia Biggs did Nights
Speaker 3: over Egypt, Cynthia did the research on that over in
Speaker 3: the east, there once lived a girl. She then down
Speaker 3: the nile. He came with a smile. She was the
Speaker 3: queen and he was the king under the moon. Yeah,
Speaker 3: your eyes won't believe and your mind came. Yeah, Nights
Speaker 3: over Egypt. They were talking about Cleopatra, of course, and
Speaker 3: and it was everything that that Dexter did has has roots,
Speaker 3: I mean very deep, like you said, afrocentric roots. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I think about that.
Speaker 4: So y'all said that that's deep about that? I really
Speaker 4: you're right. Every song.
Speaker 1: So and being in that that that cyclone of dex Here,
Speaker 1: McFadden and Whitehead and and all those writers. Is there
Speaker 1: a story of a tune that you wanted that you
Speaker 1: couldn't get because another artist had it, or in a
Speaker 1: song that was offered to you that you might have
Speaker 1: passed on that became bigger for someone else.
Speaker 3: Oh the only tune, and I guess it wasn't big
Speaker 3: for her. But McFadden and Whitehead wrote a wrote a
Speaker 3: tune call I don't know no one else to turn to,
Speaker 3: and I, uh, you know I'm a grammarian, and and
Speaker 3: uh I it was just too many had a double
Speaker 3: negative in it. And I remember McFadden said, he said, Okay, carn,
Speaker 3: this song is going to be so big that you're
Speaker 3: going to say, hey, McFadden, write me another double right,
Speaker 3: And strangely enough, I I love Love Don't Love Nobody.
Speaker 3: Always loved it, but I didn't want to cover it
Speaker 3: cuse it had double negative. Dang, but I covered it.
Speaker 3: I've become a theme song of mine. I have to
Speaker 3: do it every every performance.
Speaker 2: But I'm so glad you said that.
Speaker 1: For the longest, I was afraid to ask in public
Speaker 1: if that's grammatically correct or not correct, because you know,
Speaker 1: once the song becomes a staple, I just leave it alone.
Speaker 2: So you.
Speaker 1: No, I'm not, But for me, every time I heard
Speaker 1: love don't Love Nobody, I was like, I think that's
Speaker 1: only a term that we say, Like I, you know,
Speaker 1: I wanted to make sure that I never asked, but
Speaker 1: always in my mind when I was a kid, I
Speaker 1: always felt like that wasn't grammatically correct.
Speaker 3: And so you're so correct.
Speaker 1: Because you arrived to Philly International in seventy six, at
Speaker 1: the in nineteen seventy six, at the same time that
Speaker 1: the Jackson's had relocated to Philadelphia, did you have any
Speaker 1: run ins with him, like doing that whole recording process.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, we were recording at the same time. Oh, there
Speaker 3: were such such nice kids. They my my then husband Khalil.
Speaker 3: They would talk, They would sniggle in the corner and
Speaker 3: look at Khalil because they said that he looked like
Speaker 3: their neighbor O. J. Simpson. Oh, wow, he really does.
Speaker 3: I've never noticed it. So they liked Khalil. And Michael
Speaker 3: was having voice change problems.
Speaker 2: Okay, he was.
Speaker 3: He was what he might have been twenty then, don't.
Speaker 2: I don't know how old are seventy six, eighteen.
Speaker 3: Eighteen, okay, but his voice was changing, and there were
Speaker 3: and we were all in the same hotel at the
Speaker 3: Latham on Forsa Walnut, Okay, yeah, on seventeenth at Walnut,
Speaker 3: and we all lived in that hotel.
Speaker 2: That's where my problem was.
Speaker 3: We lived in one part of the hotel, and they
Speaker 3: had the fire doors closed, you know, because we had
Speaker 3: instruments in our room. Stuck so right, So Michael was
Speaker 3: always in my suite and he confided in me that
Speaker 3: he was cracking. There were certain certain notes on certain
Speaker 3: songs that he would crack. And so we we worked
Speaker 3: on that, you know, because I've been a vocal coach,
Speaker 3: like since I was twelve, working with those choir voices.
Speaker 2: Oh wow.
Speaker 3: So we worked on we worked on his changing the annunciation, sometimes,
Speaker 3: changing where he placed notes and sometimes and I tried
Speaker 3: to convince him to just change the notes in the phrases,
Speaker 3: you know, because he was full of full of ideas,
Speaker 3: the musical ideas, but he was so stubborn about you know,
Speaker 3: instead of instead of this figure, why can't we change
Speaker 3: it to another figure? And it conveyed the same idea.
Speaker 3: But he he was just stuck on certain you know,
Speaker 3: certain figures that he had contrived in his you know,
Speaker 3: in his head. As far as his plan. We worked yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: and and that's when I discovered he he was he
Speaker 3: was a pediatric insomniac because my mother was a pediatric insomniac.
Speaker 3: Children who don't sleep well at night.
Speaker 2: Oh k children.
Speaker 3: Yeah, all the way through through adulthood. My mother, my
Speaker 3: mother took naps during the day because she was just
Speaker 3: roaming around the house at night.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And because he would when he come into my
Speaker 3: room after we'd finish our little sessions. He I remember
Speaker 3: the first time he said, he said, I'm going to
Speaker 3: take a nap, and he and he pointed to the
Speaker 3: floor on the other side of my bed. And I'm
Speaker 3: a germaphobe, so forgot. So I wouldn't even let my kids,
Speaker 3: you know, when they grow up and travel with me.
Speaker 3: They couldn't even walk barefoot on a hotel floor. Oh no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 3: get your face. I started getting getting the housekeeper to
Speaker 3: leave me sheets and pillowcases and stuff. So when he,
Speaker 3: you know, when he come over to take a nap,
Speaker 3: he'd sleep on the floor. And I remember hearing when
Speaker 3: they were accusing him of of the of the children
Speaker 3: thing I was saying, and he and he mentioned one
Speaker 3: day to them he said, no, I never slept in
Speaker 3: the bed with them. He said, I slept on the floor.
Speaker 3: I said, I know, he does. You know that that
Speaker 3: just blew me away. That Wow, hurt me so badly.
Speaker 3: But that's what what was happening when when we were
Speaker 3: all recording at the same time.
Speaker 1: So you helped him develop his pre pre set Riggs. Wow,
Speaker 1: you you were a vocal training friend.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, all singers should get checked by seth Riggs,
Speaker 3: was no doubt. Yeah, yeah, yeah checked. He's pretty he's
Speaker 3: pretty old now, so hurry up.
Speaker 1: Well, now there's there's enough lessons on YouTube that we
Speaker 1: can just go there.
Speaker 3: Whoa, that's heavy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a forty five minute session of Michael Jackson
Speaker 1: and seth Riggs. Uh doing vocal exercises.
Speaker 3: Oh, that's cool. You know, Maurice had some issues and
Speaker 3: I and he would he would come up, you know,
Speaker 3: come up and I would work with him vocally. And
Speaker 3: I remember after Doug and I had moved to New York,
Speaker 3: I heard changes, you know, I'd go to see them
Speaker 3: a lot when they performed live, and and I would
Speaker 3: ask him about stuff, you know, that he was doing.
Speaker 3: I said, well, you know, you know where did that
Speaker 3: come from? He said, actually, he said, I went to
Speaker 3: seth Riggs. I said okay, and he said and I said, well,
Speaker 3: so it worked time. He said, yeah. But the thing
Speaker 3: is everything you told me and taught me. Seth Riggs
Speaker 3: told me and taught me. He said, but I incorporated
Speaker 3: it because I had to pay him.
Speaker 4: You're not a paid vocal coach coaching, I mean.
Speaker 3: Not for Phyllis, not for Michael. No, I was.
Speaker 2: I was just looking out for the cookout.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but they was paying somebody.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 2: But in seventy six, we weren't. No.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but you know he wanted he wanted me and
Speaker 3: the kids to take him to six Flags, you know,
Speaker 3: and my mother, you know, told me, you can't take
Speaker 3: this forty six like they just open, he said, because
Speaker 3: because you don't have security, and his security wouldn't work.
Speaker 3: You know, he just can't do that. So, no, he was.
Speaker 3: He was like a family member. My mother went to
Speaker 3: one of their concerts, and I could never get my
Speaker 3: mother to go to anybody's concerts but mine and Patty.
Speaker 3: In fact, she said Patty's was the best concert she
Speaker 3: had ever gone to.
Speaker 2: Almost got jealous, your second best.
Speaker 3: No, No, she said, it was.
Speaker 2: Miss Gane.
Speaker 6: I want to ask you about recording two particular songs.
Speaker 6: Was it all it was? And of course don't let
Speaker 6: it go to your head, but was that all it was?
Speaker 6: Just you remember that session, and you know what that was.
Speaker 3: Like I do, I really do. Jerry Butler the coolest
Speaker 3: guy in music, That's why they called him. He wrote
Speaker 3: that one. He gave me that one, and it was
Speaker 3: a ballad, and it was it was so odd hearing
Speaker 3: hearing the demo with Jerry Butler's singing. You know, I'm
Speaker 3: used to hearing him him do those smooth ballads, you know,
Speaker 3: except stuff like Western Union Man, but that was still
Speaker 3: smooth and cool and icy, and so it was. It
Speaker 3: was just so odd hearing him sing. Was that all
Speaker 3: it was? And and this was at the beginning of
Speaker 3: disco and although we didn't I didn't choose it for
Speaker 3: that reason. But when it was, it was one take too,
Speaker 3: because I'm not I'm not a one take girl. I
Speaker 3: like to do the scratch vocals. I like to live
Speaker 3: with them a couple of days and then come back
Speaker 3: in and perfect it, you know, get it, live with it,
Speaker 3: and then then get it like I really wanted. And
Speaker 3: I had, I had finished the take and Jerry said, well,
Speaker 3: that's the take, and I said, are you sure? Because
Speaker 3: you know my old habit was to live with it
Speaker 3: and then do it over a perfected John Ushery, uh
Speaker 3: did the instrumental did the orchestration that was that was
Speaker 3: a masterpiece of orchestration. It was. It was really good
Speaker 3: and it was so cute seeing them in the studio,
Speaker 3: the two of him. Jerry's all cool you know, and
Speaker 3: and icy like I said, and mature and John Ushery
Speaker 3: couldn't sit still. He had, you know, one of those
Speaker 3: type A personalities, and he was all over all over
Speaker 3: the room.
Speaker 2: For the for the one I Find You Love album?
Speaker 1: What was happening at CBS at that time, because I
Speaker 1: felt like that's that album should have been way bigger.
Speaker 2: Was that all it was is a club staple?
Speaker 3: Yeah, we got we didn't realize it was going to be,
Speaker 3: you know, so embraced by the disco world. But the
Speaker 3: disco started calling the label asking for you know, a
Speaker 3: twelve inch you know, they obliged, of course, But there
Speaker 3: was a conflicting period there with with CBS and and
Speaker 3: Philly International and and was was you know was in
Speaker 3: that came out during that period. So though I don't
Speaker 3: it might have been part of that that conflict because
Speaker 3: Gamble and Huff were powerful, very powerful, and there could
Speaker 3: have been rumblings of of envy, you know, that kind
Speaker 3: of thing, too much power.
Speaker 2: So what led to the journey to Motown.
Speaker 3: Gamble was deciding to do other things. He came to
Speaker 3: me and said, you know, he wanted to do other things,
Speaker 3: and he brought his his nephew, Chuck Chuck Gamble that
Speaker 3: had the label. But before that he's formed another label
Speaker 3: and put I know, he put me on there, and
Speaker 3: he put the OJS on there and maybe maybe.
Speaker 2: Teddy t s op.
Speaker 3: Okay, okay, yeah, yeah, And he was he was contemplating
Speaker 3: doing other things at the time.
Speaker 4: Is this when he started doing the real estate stuffy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, building, you know, building communities and stuff. Yeah, And
Speaker 3: he asked me what label would I like to, you know,
Speaker 3: to go with, because our executive vice president did my
Speaker 3: deal with Motown. So it was handing your your niece
Speaker 3: over to you know, to another thing family.
Speaker 2: I see.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so that's how that happened.
Speaker 6: Another one of my favorite songs of your machine I
Speaker 6: want to talk about it's a it's a duet. I'm
Speaker 6: back for more.
Speaker 2: How do you remember? That's right?
Speaker 6: That's the one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was on a that was a production of
Speaker 3: Norman Connor's On for Al Johnson yeah. And they had
Speaker 3: finished Al's album and they didn't have a hot single,
Speaker 3: so they called me. They recorded it in l A
Speaker 3: and so they called me. We started looking for a
Speaker 3: clincher song, you know, a strong, strong, first single, and
Speaker 3: we found I'm Back for More on an old Tabaris album.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah yeah, And so I thought we should do
Speaker 3: it as a duet. So I was going to use
Speaker 3: Sybil Thomas, one of Rufus Thomas's daughters, okay, because he's
Speaker 3: got some singing daughters. Boy, but Symple had moved to
Speaker 3: New York at the time. Uh, So I ended up
Speaker 3: doing doing it as a duet with with Al. And
Speaker 3: that song has been sampled more than anything I combined
Speaker 3: that I recorded.
Speaker 4: I was just about to ask y'all that, like, what
Speaker 4: the what are the sample? I hear the samples in
Speaker 4: the song? I was like, what are the songs that
Speaker 4: we know from this?
Speaker 3: God? Yeah, well did it? And there are when you
Speaker 3: look on who's sampled, there are names of of rap
Speaker 3: groups and rappers that I don't even know. So so
Speaker 3: a lot of those we don't know. Okay, so badly then, oh, okay.
Speaker 4: You must have took sampling well, because since you said
Speaker 4: that you're on a steady evolution and you're fine with me.
Speaker 4: Were growing and going through whatever changes. When they started
Speaker 4: sampling and using it for hip hop, you were you
Speaker 4: were cool about it, right, Oh?
Speaker 3: I loved it?
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, okay, because don't let it go to my head.
Speaker 4: It's like, you know, everybody left that brand newbie and something.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, don't let it go to your head. You know.
Speaker 3: One of those those message things that that Kenny and
Speaker 3: Leon were famous for and surprisingly little known fact they
Speaker 3: I remember when Kenny gave me the song, he said,
Speaker 3: because he gave it to me as a demo with
Speaker 3: him playing guitar and singing, you know, and and and
Speaker 3: Huff did a little piano on it. And so when
Speaker 3: I he said this, you might like this one, and
Speaker 3: he said, don't worry. Huff and I had the had
Speaker 3: the background that that's cool, you know. So when I finished,
Speaker 3: when I finished putting down the lead vocal, the final vocal,
Speaker 3: I went in his office and I said, come on,
Speaker 3: we're ready for the background. And and gamble stead, Oh
Speaker 3: that's okay, Gene, you got it. Oh no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 3: y'all got to come sing this with me. And they know.
Speaker 4: That's them in the background.
Speaker 2: Don't let it go to.
Speaker 4: Who wait No, no, no, no, who's who was?
Speaker 3: No? No, no, I'm sorry, I knew that.
Speaker 2: I'm just wait, okay, so this is a very one.
Speaker 1: I don't even know that's Rolling Chambers playing guitar with
Speaker 1: you on that guitar scatty thing at the end. But
Speaker 1: when you want to incorporate your scating whatnot. And you know,
Speaker 1: we haven't interviewed the Whispers or George Benson yet, so
Speaker 1: you're probably the first pop scatter that I can ask
Speaker 1: this to. What comes first? Like, are you singing your
Speaker 1: and I'm talking about the thing that you do again?
Speaker 3: No, no, most folks can't hear that. I'm with that,
Speaker 3: you know, don't even know that that's under me because
Speaker 3: what I did was, I was just I was thinking
Speaker 3: of ad libs. Well that was in the middle, but
Speaker 3: like it ended up, you know, being like like an
Speaker 3: ad lib section I did I And I don't know
Speaker 3: if it was Roland or not on on guitar then,
Speaker 3: but yeah, I imitated the don't never never never know it,
Speaker 3: don't let it go to your head, your head.
Speaker 1: So that was you first, and then they followed you.
Speaker 3: Know I was imitating. I was imitating his his solo.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, so he.
Speaker 3: Like we did on Infantized, you know, going back to
Speaker 3: that period because like like like on Uninfantized, every every
Speaker 3: every note in the solo in Wayne Shorter solo, some
Speaker 3: day you will grow up. You'll grow up and had
Speaker 3: your problems, little girl. You must try to be strong.
Speaker 3: That was that was us putting lyrics to Wayne's solo. Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 3: so it was the same the same habit.
Speaker 1: You decided to do uh if you don't know me
Speaker 1: by now, which the irony of it is that you're
Speaker 1: not on Philly International anymore.
Speaker 3: And that's what Motown said.
Speaker 2: Was it your idea to do? It?
Speaker 1: Was that Motown like, oh, we have a legacy artist
Speaker 1: from Philly International, so let's bring some of that over here.
Speaker 3: Or no, it was it was it was my my idea.
Speaker 3: In fact, when when when I made uh, who is it? Okay,
Speaker 3: Iris Gordy and and Raynona Gordy were you know, over
Speaker 3: over that that pride jacked.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: They when when I said I want to do if
Speaker 3: you don't know me by now, they the sculler butt was, well,
Speaker 3: you've already left that label, so they gave me about
Speaker 3: five long play albums with samples of Joe bat music
Speaker 3: because it was like, what about us, you know. Well
Speaker 3: they didn't say that, but I got it, and from those,
Speaker 3: I chose my Baby Loves Me. Oh yeah, I did that,
Speaker 3: and I did another another motown tune. But yeah, but
Speaker 3: if you don't know Me by Now. I remember telling
Speaker 3: Teddy that I wanted to cover, you know, to cover that. Well,
Speaker 3: what I wanted to do at first was I miss you, Oh,
Speaker 3: I miss you, and and Teddy said that doesn't fit you.
Speaker 3: He said, because think about the lyrics. He said, because
Speaker 3: it's gotten drink and drink and he said you don't drink.
Speaker 3: That's when I went to if you don't Know Me
Speaker 3: by Now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, another genius move on that album.
Speaker 2: And this is kind of weird.
Speaker 1: I think the way that I just discovered classic songs
Speaker 1: is I discovered the cover first. I knew your version
Speaker 1: of completeness first, before I knew many Riputins versions.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, yeah, you know that was the only thing
Speaker 3: that she had recorded that I could do.
Speaker 2: Oh, because he's just reflexing it.
Speaker 3: Everything else of hers was out of my stratosphere. And
Speaker 3: the week that she passed away. She came to see
Speaker 3: me at the Roxy. I did maybe three days at
Speaker 3: the roxyat and it was just just a few months
Speaker 3: before she passed the way. Because she she was telling
Speaker 3: me how she she was. She said, she said, I'm
Speaker 3: putting y'all down. She was because she was on CBS
Speaker 3: right and she said, I'm going to do my own things.
Speaker 3: She was telling me about a clothes clothing line. This
Speaker 3: was the way after she had had the mistectomy, and
Speaker 3: and that those two nights, George Duke came to see me.
Speaker 3: Stevie came to see me. Uh Serena came to see me.
Speaker 3: Chaka Chaka was just pregnant with her first child. Then
Speaker 3: there was so many folks that I didn't know came
Speaker 3: came to see me at the Roxy. It's right on Sunset,
Speaker 3: right at the Beverly Hills line at the sign. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: I know that for you.
Speaker 1: In eighty six, you know, one of the one of
Speaker 1: the best comeback stories in music was you know you
Speaker 1: achieving your number one single with Closer than Close, right
Speaker 1: and again, I'm Flame of Love is like.
Speaker 2: One of my all time favorite songs of yours.
Speaker 1: Generally, what was happening in eighty six for you, like,
Speaker 1: were you expecting this at all? Because I think a
Speaker 1: lot of times when artists are on a lot of
Speaker 1: labels and they record and record and record, and the
Speaker 1: desired results. I mean, sometimes it's like a stalled car.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's not. But this, this really truly felt like
Speaker 1: a victory lap for you, Like, can you talk about
Speaker 1: just the whole process of making that record and what
Speaker 1: your expectations were and how did it feel too.
Speaker 2: Come with those two hit singles.
Speaker 3: Well, it was so such a pleasure to work with Grover.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because a friend of his, what's his name, he
Speaker 3: used to be on the news here in Philly. I
Speaker 3: knew him. He does he doesn't add now for a
Speaker 3: legal firm, and his name will come to me. But
Speaker 3: he went to more House and I met him in Atlanta,
Speaker 3: you know, when he was matriculating and he hooked. It
Speaker 3: was his idea for me and Grover to get to
Speaker 3: know each other. So he made the introduction and it
Speaker 3: was like we had we were steparated Siame's twins. Grover
Speaker 3: and I. We were so compatible. It was just amazing.
Speaker 3: In fact, Closer than Close was the first the first
Speaker 3: song We chose because he produced two of my albums,
Speaker 3: the two on Atlantic, and we just thought so much
Speaker 3: alike and he just loved playing on my product. You know,
Speaker 3: he played on just about everything on those two albums.
Speaker 3: In fact, on the twenty fourth of April, uh in
Speaker 3: Atlantic City, the National R and B Music Society is
Speaker 3: in conjunction with the Mayor of Atlantic City, is installing
Speaker 3: the first class of artists on the Atlantic City Walk
Speaker 3: of Fame. And I know the Delphonics on there. James
Speaker 3: Brown will be installed and Grover Washington Junior, so you know,
Speaker 3: and I've been in touch with, you know, with his
Speaker 3: his daughter and his son and his wife Chris and
Speaker 3: there then be there and yeah, and and the grandchildren. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So I had to had to mention that. But I
Speaker 3: had my my manager, my then manager had put me
Speaker 3: on two labels. Sugar Hill Records was one and Boston
Speaker 3: International Records with Maurice Starr sugar Hill and Sylvia Sylvia Robinson.
Speaker 3: And he was in such a hurry. We'd get half
Speaker 3: an album done and he was saying, well, they're not
Speaker 3: you know, they're not doing this quickly enough. So he
Speaker 3: would get me. He made me leave the label and
Speaker 3: got both Maurice and Sylvia to grant me unconditional releases
Speaker 3: from the labels. But but of course I stayed with
Speaker 3: with Sylvia Rown for the two albums on Atlantic. It
Speaker 3: was weird then, you know, Electrosylo Atlantic and Warner Brothers.
Speaker 2: Once the nineties come along.
Speaker 1: How do you feel that the industry, especially with with
Speaker 1: with black artists.
Speaker 2: I guess with the process of of.
Speaker 1: You know, with hip hop coming in and whatnot, and
Speaker 1: you're seeing like another generation of artists coming too the
Speaker 1: system that's kind of far away from the traditional style
Speaker 1: of what soul or singing or jazz music or whatever, like,
Speaker 1: how do you not get discouraged by that?
Speaker 2: I think?
Speaker 1: I think because a lot of artists could easily fall
Speaker 1: into bitterness and anger for some reason, I don't feel.
Speaker 1: I don't feel that from you at at all. Like,
Speaker 1: how have you been able to maintain you're cool and
Speaker 1: sort of a steady pace throughout your career?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm you're very astute as an observer because because
Speaker 3: it never it never affected me negatively. I like the
Speaker 3: fact that they stampled me a lot, you know, and
Speaker 3: back when you know, when the when the lyrics were
Speaker 3: posts them and cute, you know, and positive. I you know,
Speaker 3: I embraced it as well. Uh and and and they
Speaker 3: they used vintage music anyway, you know in there. So
Speaker 3: I like the fact that they were introducing the the
Speaker 3: young listeners to to the vintage artist and the vinted sound.
Speaker 3: So I was, I was. I was cool with it.
Speaker 3: And the fact that that I, you know, had a
Speaker 3: jazz audience, you know, a strong, sturdy jazz audience, and
Speaker 3: the R and B side, So I, you know, I
Speaker 3: could perform everywhere, you know, and in Europe you can.
Speaker 3: You can perform in Europe for the rest of your life.
Speaker 3: They know more songs than you know. Absolutely, So I was,
Speaker 3: I was cool.
Speaker 4: Can you also talk about to because I remember a time,
Speaker 4: and I'm decent from my childhood memories, but I remember
Speaker 4: a time when you became you got into education and
Speaker 4: you were teaching teaching at Howard and you were teaching
Speaker 4: vocal Oh.
Speaker 3: I got offers from several universities. You had to join
Speaker 3: their faculty. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but it was it was
Speaker 3: a bit too confining.
Speaker 2: Back.
Speaker 3: A couple of universities offered me, they said, okay, you
Speaker 3: can pickure your days that you'll have classes, and they
Speaker 3: had replacements for me, subs for me when I had to,
Speaker 3: you know, to to go to work, you know, this week,
Speaker 3: and and you know it was it was cool like that.
Speaker 3: But I just didn't, you know, because I was still
Speaker 3: raising the kids then, and and that happened with with
Speaker 3: some Broadway offers as well, because I couldn't I couldn't
Speaker 3: bring the kids to New York. What did you say,
Speaker 3: my mother did not want to live in New York. Oh?
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, that part, that part, it is very different
Speaker 4: than Atlanta.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. But but the fact that I had those
Speaker 3: two very diverse audiences kept me, kept me afloat. And
Speaker 3: I you know, and I'm glad a lot of the
Speaker 3: rappers have grown up. Your benches, rappers have grown up
Speaker 3: and changed their lyrics, and I'm thinking that's going to
Speaker 3: happen down the road for the younger ones, you know,
Speaker 3: So there's hope people, That's right.
Speaker 1: I have one more question, So can you talk about
Speaker 1: your work on the Jazz Is Dead series with Alicia
Speaker 1: Heat and Adrian Oh?
Speaker 3: That was that was quite an experience. You know. I
Speaker 3: haven't hadn't done anything like that since I appeared on
Speaker 3: an album. And you mentioned and to may right, uh
Speaker 3: years years and years ago, I think it might have been. No,
Speaker 3: it wasn't his first album. It was called life Cycle,
Speaker 3: and he recorded in Boston at the New England Conservatory
Speaker 3: and he had uh Andy Bay Deadie Bridgewater, Ron Carter,
Speaker 3: so many of you know, of the top jazz artists
Speaker 3: on on this this project. And what he brought was
Speaker 3: a skeleton skeleton, you know, skeleton tracks because it was
Speaker 3: an album, and we basically he gave us titles and themes, patterns,
Speaker 3: and we basically it was extemporaneous for the most part,
Speaker 3: And not since then had I been able to do
Speaker 3: that until I got with with Ali Muhammad Shahid and
Speaker 3: Adrian Young. Because I get there in the studio they
Speaker 3: hadn't sent me in any music, no ideas, no titles, nothing,
Speaker 3: And Adrian since it plays me some changes, pretty avant
Speaker 3: garde changes for most of those tunes, which was very
Speaker 3: appealing to me, you know, like sitting in with Pherol
Speaker 3: Saunders or Felonious Mark you know sometimes. So that was
Speaker 3: cool by me. And then I had to go on
Speaker 3: Mike with no idea as to what I was going
Speaker 3: to say, which I hadn't done like I said, since
Speaker 3: them two May album. I composed my lyric. I compose
Speaker 3: the melodies just listening to the chords, and the titles
Speaker 3: of the songs were all extemporaneous and off the top
Speaker 3: of my head, with no prior, no prior notice, no
Speaker 3: prior conceiving. And didn't even know that was how it
Speaker 3: was good. It was.
Speaker 4: It was a stretch like exercise, right, like.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it was like calisthetics for a whole album.
Speaker 2: But you did it.
Speaker 3: It made you stand on your tippy toes.
Speaker 2: That's good.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, I want to thank you for taking
Speaker 1: time out to speak with us, and you know we're
Speaker 1: lifelong fans of yours, and you know, definitely one of
Speaker 1: my favorite singers.
Speaker 2: And I thank you for taking a chance on an
Speaker 2: unknown drummer.
Speaker 1: And you know that that that a massive effect on me.
Speaker 4: And I'm the circle back story, Auntie. That that that
Speaker 4: you do now every day every night.
Speaker 3: Oh absolutely, you know. I didn't remember you from you know,
Speaker 3: from the from the performances. I started, I, uh, who
Speaker 3: is your guy in your late night guy that you
Speaker 3: I never watched his show. I passed by his show, uh,
Speaker 3: you know, channel surfing and I saw you and your guys.
Speaker 3: I tried to like his part, you know, his jokes
Speaker 3: and his guests. Uh. And it didn't. It didn't work.
Speaker 3: So I started recording your show, his show, y'all show. Uh,
Speaker 3: and I would I would fast forward to when y'all
Speaker 3: broke the commercial until you played, you know, on the
Speaker 3: faith for the commercials, and when you came back, and
Speaker 3: that I loved And I guess I I I it
Speaker 3: was because cellularly I remembered you. Oh nothing for me,
Speaker 3: see yeah.
Speaker 2: Oh wow. Well I guess we're leaving the show now, Steve.
Speaker 2: So watch tonight's show. It's a hot mess. The music,
Speaker 2: the music, no, especially the music.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 2: I thank you, Thank you once again.
Speaker 1: And on behalf of paid Bill give give well bro
Speaker 1: and fan take a.
Speaker 2: Little absolutely get well paid Bill, Steve. Uh, we thank you.
Speaker 1: This is another classic episode of Quest Love Supreme and
Speaker 1: we'll see week on the next go round.
Speaker 2: All right, y'all peace.
Speaker 1: What's Love Supreme is a production of Iheartened Radio. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.