James "JT" Taylor

00:00:00
Speaker 1: Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. We've been waiting, ladies, jump and welcome to another episode, a special episode of Quests Love Supreme. We've been waiting for this. We've been waiting for this. You know what, Steve, I'm actually more excited for the twelve year old version of you right now.

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

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

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

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

00:01:19
Speaker 4: Not totally, but I have my own version of it when I'm.

00:01:24
Speaker 3: Through the experience. Okay, so maybe I need to hear this.

00:01:28
Speaker 1: I'm under the impression based on Okay, so I used to Oh, God, ladies and gentlemen, this quest. I love a quest, Love Supreme. Of course, I'm here with Sugar, Steven and our guest today. I don't even want to waste long arduous introduction because you know my introduction is will be nineteen minutes. I'm sitting here with the God, the King of All bar Misvas, the God, the most velvet voice, Yo, Supreme, Jesus Christ like mind, Nat King, Cole the Voice James J. T. Taylor, formerly of Cool in the Game.

00:02:08
Speaker 3: Thank you all right.

00:02:09
Speaker 1: So here's the deal. And I believe I might have told this on on Robert's story as well, but at the time when I invited Ronald Brother Beyon Colise Beyond. Back when I was teaching at NYU with Harry Wider, we once had brother Ronald Bell, saxophonist, primary songwriter of Cool in a Gang, and he told us the story of how he wrote Celebrations, so basically riding high off the third wave of what the band is about the experience. Of course, if you're fans of the band, you know they came to it with a lot of jazz soul. More on jazz, A lot of tribe called Quest Samples came from that wave, and then in seventy four a joke sort of mocking soul Makosa winds up being like one of the most pivotal funk songs of the seventies. So they had a seventies wave and then doing a disco of course open Sesame on the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack that was kind of their third wave. And now they're about to start the hit making wave, and of course, fresh off the success of their Ladies' Night single and the subsequent album of that same name, they're on tour and they happen to be in the Bay Area, and I believe that they arrived in town the day before on a Friday, to do some local record stores and signings, because now you know, the heat is back on. The Heat's back, yeah, And brother Ronald tells me that the promoter who's bringing you guys to the particular venue, playhouse in the Bay Area, has another show happening that night and would he like to attend. Would you guys like at ten? And that is when the Prince and Rick James show come to this venue. And what winds up happening is Prince goes on first, and at this moment, Prince has the number one song in the country on the Soul charts without Want to Be a Lover, right, and Ronald says that he really wasn't all that familiar with Prince, like he heard about him, but he really didn't pay attention and he definitely wasn't familiar with the song. However, he was highly impressed at how within two seconds everybody just screamed and lost their minds. It wasn't just like, you know, like everyone right, it could have been okay. So he's more impressed with that. So that sort of brings out the antennas in his brain is like, YO, pay attention to the song for that. So he's just pay attention to the song. And Prince finishes, is set and it's like a twenty minut and it change over for Rick James, and Ronald asked the promoter, YO, run me backstays real quick to one of them dressing rooms as a piano in it, and there was a spare room and Ronald sits at the table and he starts notating what he thought he just heard Prince do, which is, I want to be a lover. He writes those chorus down and he stares at this course and as most songwriters do. Another way to get to sort of squeeze juice from a used fruit is you figure out different ways to flip a song, rewrite it again. People do it all the.

00:05:46
Speaker 3: Time, like all the time.

00:05:48
Speaker 1: Fleetwood Mac famously on their Real It still says Spinner's idea number two. Their favorite song was I'll Be Around, and thus they made dreams on rumors I'll be around. So anyway, he's looking at the notes and suddenly he's like, yo, let me play this backwards now.

00:06:10
Speaker 3: N then.

00:06:14
Speaker 1: Backwards is then? So he notates, He notates the music and he's like, all right, I got the idea. I'm gonna go rock to watch Rick's James I believe when you guys got finished the tour. It's like three weeks later and he's gonna either demo or submit the ideas to you guys. But he's like, wait, I gotta make this complete song. Only got a groove. I want to do a complete song. And at a bridge to it, and he was running. He didn't have any nothing that was coming to mind. He looks on the table on top of the piano and there is a cash box magazine and he opens up the charts. He goes right to the pop charts and looks for the highest charting Black song. So this particular issue, Rock with You by Michael Jackson was number five. He knew Rock with You well and when he wrote the bridge for it, due It's Time to Come Together. It's the same chords as girl, close your eyes, let this rhythm get into you. Every one around, come on, come on that That to me was one of the most genius stories I've ever heard of a song being constructed.

00:07:40
Speaker 3: Well, he was. He was always like that.

00:07:41
Speaker 4: He was I called him to feel this leader, you know, because he would do things like that, and sometimes we would just hear it. We said, where did that come from? And we just you know, to ourselves, and sometimes he would, you know, regurgitate why he did it or why I came. But my understanding was that when it was there, you know, because when people bring all everybody would bring things in all the time, ideas everything, you know, little lyrics here are guitar player, a guitar part here, And it was more of a celebration of the resurrection like Ladies' Night came out big record, and nobody knew it was cool in the gang because they heard.

00:08:18
Speaker 3: Me, you know.

00:08:19
Speaker 4: But we said, well, how we're going to follow that up? So if you listen to Ladies Night, come on, let's all celebrate. It was already preordained that we were going to do celebration. Now, I don't know if that influenced him, but I know when I knew it were going to be celebration, I thought back, I said, you know that spiritual thing starts hitting you and say like we were like foreseeing this.

00:08:44
Speaker 3: Yeah, we said, come on, celebrate, So now let's sell all celebrate.

00:08:47
Speaker 4: And then with the group going through that down period from like seventy five I think to seven of eight or something like that, Yes, thirty nine, there was a drought and they told me the story that you know, the record lay was going to drop them in all that stuff, and I said, okay, well what we gonna do? You know that came later, That question came later, but yeah, so there was like a like I said, resurrection as well, and we had gotten over that first Ladies to Night album and that was big, and so how we're gonna do it again? And people were actually doubting us. You know, it was more like, you know, I want.

00:09:21
Speaker 3: The old old cool to gang.

00:09:23
Speaker 1: Yeah, I want I want to talk about it. I want to I want to talk about that.

00:09:27
Speaker 3: Wait.

00:09:27
Speaker 1: Wait, I got to start to beget it. So I just wanted to ask if you knew about that story. But that was my that was my cold opening.

00:09:34
Speaker 4: That was that was the first I've heard of it that in depth anyway. But I think again, it doesn't surprise me.

00:09:40
Speaker 3: Because you know, he was like that man. He was He was a.

00:09:44
Speaker 4: Special kind of guy from a many different angles, many different angles, but you know, a sweetheart, and I would say he was more he was a collector. He was a jazz guy. But you know, anything was possible, you know, if it was there. And I think when he even heard when he heard me sing, you know, he was.

00:10:05
Speaker 5: Just like, uh, there goes that celebration.

00:10:09
Speaker 1: That okay, wait, ladies, we just we had a technical difficulty.

00:10:15
Speaker 3: We just rewinded.

00:10:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, but Steve had punch line in the century. He was like, well, there goes this celebration.

00:10:24
Speaker 3: We got to write this stuff down. This is the song, you know.

00:10:27
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was either that or la oh no oh no.

00:10:34
Speaker 1: All right, So wait, let me ask you, because we're going to get to all these things, uh, but let me ask you what was your very first musical memory.

00:10:43
Speaker 4: My first musical memory was I had to be like six, because I remember we had just gotten my first television. I was maybe five or six, and I remember being in the kitchen and looking through to the living room and my grandfather brought the television and it turned it on.

00:11:03
Speaker 3: There was a group there. I still don't I don't know who they were, but I just knew that.

00:11:07
Speaker 4: They were dressed like like a five man group, and they were just looking beautiful. And I did I didn't even go to the television. I just stood back and watched them. It just kind of messed me, rather.

00:11:17
Speaker 3: Like looking like, you know, the puppy, you know, with the head, you know. And my sister.

00:11:23
Speaker 4: I have eight sisters, by the way, so oh no, that's why I understand women.

00:11:29
Speaker 3: A house for of women, you know, so I know how to move, you know.

00:11:33
Speaker 4: But she entered into a contest on the Cousin Bruce Show, and this has taken it back and she actually won, and she won that big smiley face thing or Cussy Cousin Brucie, and she sang a song by wasn't Linda Jones, but it was called I Know.

00:11:53
Speaker 3: I Know you don't love Me No More, No More.

00:11:58
Speaker 4: Something like that, And there was a up at solo and I would like and it was this is all radio wasn't on television and I was and that radio was always on top of the refrigerator and I would.

00:12:08
Speaker 3: Stand there and mimic the trumpet solo.

00:12:13
Speaker 4: That was like my part, and that was like the first thing that drew me into music right there.

00:12:20
Speaker 1: Wow, so you're one of nine?

00:12:23
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, yes, ten?

00:12:26
Speaker 1: Actually where do you fall in line?

00:12:29
Speaker 3: I say?

00:12:30
Speaker 4: I was always say that I was looked up to and looked down on, right in the middle.

00:12:36
Speaker 3: Because my you know, my sister, you know, we we had we.

00:12:39
Speaker 4: Had a lot of fund. You know, it's a house full of women going on. And my brother he was younger, and I had an older brother who was, you know, my mother's child, but he'd be you know, we were all one family, and when we got together, it was a party.

00:12:54
Speaker 1: So are any of your other siblings as gifted? Is this a musical family?

00:13:02
Speaker 3: I will say yeah, because everybody's staying in the church choir. You know. It was almost like mandatory. You know.

00:13:08
Speaker 4: My mom could sing, and we were born in the rural south South Carolina.

00:13:14
Speaker 3: What city in Lawrence, l a u are in US.

00:13:18
Speaker 4: And for my mother, I think she realized that I have to get my children out of here to get some type of opportunity.

00:13:25
Speaker 3: Going, you know. And this is just my thoughts. You know, we really talked about that.

00:13:29
Speaker 4: But when we came to Jersey, we actually went to Brooklyn first when we maybe both found our way over to uh In to Hackensack and at the church there, at the New Hope Church, my sister, you know, we were all in the choir, as I said, but my sister Frieda, she actually did a solo once, just her piano, and I remember that being such a had a great effect that someone could be standing there with just a piano singing. And she didn't dress in the robe. She actually had a red dress on and with legs showing in the church, you know. But it was it was classy, you know what I mean. And I remember sitting on the side just watching it and just saying, just letting it all come in, you know.

00:14:12
Speaker 3: And but everybody, you know, it's pretty much as far as the professional side.

00:14:17
Speaker 4: They didn't go into that, but but that that church part was something that was a big influence on all of us.

00:14:24
Speaker 1: Where's your household's attitude to secular music at the time, Like, were you allowed to listen to motown or music of a day?

00:14:34
Speaker 3: Oh?

00:14:34
Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely? My mother, you know, I think you know, being listen. My father passed away.

00:14:40
Speaker 3: When I was nine. Okay, he was like only in his forties.

00:14:44
Speaker 4: Okay, So here's my mother with all these kids, you know, and her rules were lawt you know, you came home from school, you did this, you did that, You got up in the morning, you did this, you did that. And her thing was to make sure that we were rounded up, that she knew where we were and what we were pretty much doing. So she had a transistor radio on the refrigerator, again which no one could touch, and usually it was either some gospel going on on there, and sometimes she would flip to.

00:15:14
Speaker 3: Like some blues or something like that.

00:15:16
Speaker 4: But my uncle, who yeah, he used to come by and he would drop off jazz albums. He would first he would bring jazz albums for me to listen to, and he would leave him there, and I mean he went from you know, still Austin and then also sometimes in the mix he would have like a Mom's Maybley album. So as long as you know we were in the house doing our thing, she was pretty much happy.

00:15:43
Speaker 3: So you know, it's like we're playing all the motown.

00:15:47
Speaker 4: She's in the live in the kitchen doing her thing, and we were in hip party of dancing. And back then it was the long rc RCA. You know, stereo, you know, the best sound in the world, right, Okay, you know you're putting the records on and then the quarter and all that stuff. But as long as we were like happy and we were around her, she knew we were.

00:16:07
Speaker 3: We were having a good time. She let us stretch out.

00:16:10
Speaker 4: Man, it was and I and that that also helped speed up my love for music and and and going into different genres as well.

00:16:23
Speaker 1: I'll say that, uh, you're I'm not even gonna say former employers. Your former group's story has been getting out in the first three years, and they kind of taken advantage of social media to tell these like two minute Instagram animated vignettes of like what their life was like as teenagers before they formed a band, and the kind of war stories that Cool was talking about. And George, you know that were you growing up in that part of Jersey because like to hear cool tell it like, I'm like, yo, I'm a shocked you still alive, Like the amount of the gang stories he told me, and you know every day fighting for like a quarterbread, Like literally did you get a quarter to get a loaf of bread to eat that day?

00:17:17
Speaker 4: Like?

00:17:17
Speaker 5: Yeah?

00:17:19
Speaker 1: Was was that?

00:17:19
Speaker 4: Like?

00:17:19
Speaker 1: What was Jersey?

00:17:20
Speaker 3: Like?

00:17:21
Speaker 1: What were your memories of Jersey?

00:17:23
Speaker 4: My memories are faun I had fond members because we didn't have that vibe.

00:17:27
Speaker 3: You know, we had our boys.

00:17:29
Speaker 4: With you know, park scraps, everybody you know, fighting and stuff like that, but it was it was more like very sparse.

00:17:36
Speaker 3: You know in our area. Everybody knew everybody.

00:17:40
Speaker 4: We didn't have a real racial problem, you know with the white students that went to school with us. And when we played we had it was within like about two to four block area, so you knew everybody. And when it was some fight, we never had like gangs fighting to get territory and somebody stealing your money. If somebody stole your money, you know there was a fight going on, but it didn't happen too often.

00:18:03
Speaker 3: Because we had this place called Second Street, Park, And that's what it was like.

00:18:10
Speaker 4: Our babysitter, our parents' babysitter. You know, they knew where you were, and we weren't allowed to like just wander off down downtown or go to this place. You know, you had to ask and to go home to ask to be somewhere. So again, we didn't have that type of friction. No, not nothing close to Jersey City.

00:18:31
Speaker 1: Do you remember the first time that you saw a concert or performance like who were your north Stars? As far as like, wow, that's what I want to do. You're a rare breed of a singer that came out during the time you came out, because you were kind of like even to me, you were like an older brother figure. You weren't my pops like that Teddy Pendergrass. Yeah, you know, like that to me sounded like my pops and my uncles, whereas like you were kind of like my cooler older brother, like too old for us to like live in a bunk bed, you know, but like I like that varsity jacket level. So the thing is is that I know, you know, by the time the Jackson five come out, you're like eighteen, So I don't know if it's hitting you the same way that it's hitting like my seven year old sister, Like where the Jackson five was everyone's north star? So for you, Like yeah, because you have a Johnny Mathews voice. I asked like, were you more akin to like the styles of Frankie Lyman and the teenagers?

00:19:46
Speaker 4: Like yeah, that's good that you brought that up. Well, the thing is with my I remember, you know, like I said, seeing in the church choir and everything, but always had a band also, and I would like wherever there was music happened in town, I found myself there, whether it was older guys or you know, guys my age.

00:20:06
Speaker 3: And when I had my.

00:20:08
Speaker 4: First group of three and we were like we call the Electoral five, you know, like the Jackson five, you know before that, you know, when they were really like young, you know, he had apple jack hats and the nice shiny suits and everything, and we were called it Electro five, you know, And so that that spread everything up. But there was a band in town called the Phialaa Soul and like the best of soul.

00:20:34
Speaker 3: And I know it sounds a little fishy, but you know I got to see.

00:20:40
Speaker 4: I had to get back and see at least throw one at him, you know. But but these guys were so good. I'm telling you. They played sly It's close as things to Sly as sly himself. And we used to actually follow them around. And the thing that was odd was that the Catholic Church is the diaces, would allow us to have parties and they would have this like little drop off. So they would go to Lodie, to Hackensack, over to this town and they had a following, and I used to follow them, and years later I end up being the lead singer of that same group. So Slyde became the one that I loved the most, and not just because it was him, but it's the eclectic part of their band, having clarinets, trumpets, women, you know, a drummer, you know, all these different parts at a B three organ.

00:21:38
Speaker 3: So that was everything I pretty much grew up with.

00:21:41
Speaker 4: And he was like, and still is to this day, like my guy, you know, wow, Okay, yeah.

00:21:48
Speaker 1: That's what's up. What was the first album you ever purchased?

00:21:53
Speaker 3: And I knew you're gonna dig with that one. That's a see.

00:21:56
Speaker 4: The album were in the house that that never bought because we didn't have money, so it was things usually like a Surely Seizar album or something like that. But I never bought gospel albums my mother. That was like kind of her role. But if I think back to it, it had to be something with motown or James Brown. Probably a James Brown record.

00:22:20
Speaker 5: Okay, okay, where are you living now? Just out of curiosity in North Jersey? Okay?

00:22:28
Speaker 3: Yeah, still home?

00:22:31
Speaker 1: Besides church? Were there any other functions that you were singing at high schools?

00:22:35
Speaker 4: Or I would singing anywhere any style in the park at it for nothing. You know, you wouldn't getting paid, But.

00:22:46
Speaker 3: I never I don't have to see.

00:22:48
Speaker 4: I didn't say to myself this is what I wanted to do. I was in the midst of it from the moment I heard music. If you if you understand what I'm it's like I didn't have a time with Okay, this is what I'm going to do for life. It was just a part of me, you know. And it's like a lot of things are like that for me. You know, I don't have to really put on airs to be something or to accept someone doing something. And like it's like when I see you and your band, it's like that's supposed to happen, and whatever you're doing, I'm just gonna immerse myself in it and not be so judgmental, even if I don't, you know, particularly like everything. It's just I think that the life of music is like my life blood. And that's why I don't have a specific moment. But when when you say Jesus moment, it's like, I remember, like my mother used to we got too old to get that whip, and you know, she would like make us sit on the steps or something like that. And one day, you know, I don't know what I did, but she she sat me on the back steps in our back porch, and I was just sitting there and I was always like a very like outside the Bible thing, you know, like things didn't make sense to me.

00:24:13
Speaker 3: Is why does this happened?

00:24:14
Speaker 1: I'm like, you know, but I meant that metaphorically.

00:24:18
Speaker 3: I didn't mean, man, yeah, I know what you meant, but I'm trying to get to something.

00:24:22
Speaker 4: So one day I'm sitting there and I actually felt like I saw the tree growing. And this is when I was very very young, so I've always had that feeling. So there wasn't a moment of that Jesus moment of music. I'm going to do this in my life. It was just a part of the maturation, was all of it. So when it did happen, got it. I was already in the midst of it, and it never overwhelmed me at that time.

00:24:51
Speaker 3: If you understand what I mean, Yeah, yeah, I got it.

00:24:55
Speaker 1: So I'll ask you what was your knowledge of the moment they became cool in the Gang? I know they were various other groups, but were you wear them from their first self titled record those Oh yeah, first, So what was your opinion of Like what did you think? Were they just like, oh they from Jersey or no?

00:25:18
Speaker 3: No.

00:25:20
Speaker 4: I thought they were awesome because we used to, you know, carry the boomboxes. Have Ben and a friend of mine, Curtis, he would always have his boombox and we would listening to Cooling the Gang stuff walking to school. And sometime I go to his house and I remember, I forget what Albert was. I think was the ice block cool in the Gang? It was like a block the message yet the message yet Yeah, And so I got into what they were talking about because we were growing up in the civil rights so those things they were talking about in a musical way.

00:25:49
Speaker 3: So that's pretty clever how they got the message across.

00:25:53
Speaker 4: You know, we're not even as blatant as like a girl Scott did, you know. But it was something that I could late to musically as well as instrumentally, and something you could dance to at the same time.

00:26:06
Speaker 3: So that was always a magnet.

00:26:08
Speaker 4: And if you look at all the groups back then, from James Brown, you know, I'm black and I'm proud anything that anybody was doing Marvin, it was the social consciousness while we were growing up that implemented music that showed instrumentation and all these great guys playing this stuff. And then, like I said, with my uncle dropping jazz music off, I realized that they were telling the same story growing up. So it was reaching and pulling me in all of these different directions. But I thought that Coolning were great, and ironically when I mentioned the Flair of Soul, we actually opened up for them once at Newark College I think it's Caine College in Newark, and I tried to get backstage to meet them. This is years before I even I became a member, and some security guy wouldn't let me come.

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

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

00:27:06
Speaker 5: Okay, that's such a cool story.

00:27:09
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's all one man, all it all.

00:27:12
Speaker 3: It's all related in some way. You know.

00:27:15
Speaker 2: That's really interesting that you were a fan and tried to meet that ends up in the band, right.

00:27:19
Speaker 3: Yeah, and end up. It's crazy.

00:27:22
Speaker 1: How did you specifically get their attention? What's the story process that leads to you, guys meeting to audition for the band?

00:27:32
Speaker 4: There was a there was a part on a house of music and studios and the West Orange and I did a session with Jeff Dixon.

00:27:43
Speaker 3: Wait what Jeff Dixon?

00:27:45
Speaker 5: Yes?

00:27:46
Speaker 1: Really?

00:27:47
Speaker 3: And I went I got.

00:27:48
Speaker 4: A call that step and said, listen, man, this is this guy doing a he's doing trying to put this group together. And his name was Jeff Dixon. He wants you to come down. I told him about you. And but in the stadion and I did a There was a section of the song that I did and when I finished my part, I went out and when it was done, he said, come back in, and he said, he said, listen to what happens to the song when your part comes, and he played it through and he said, you.

00:28:17
Speaker 3: Hear that, that's it right there.

00:28:19
Speaker 4: He said, I got to get you with somebody, you know, And I was like, I was just doing what he instructed me to do. So when I got the call to come to audition, I don't know if it was Stephen, whether it was Jeff Dixon.

00:28:34
Speaker 3: That that told cool him about.

00:28:36
Speaker 4: Me, but I know when when I got there, Irene Conrad I mentioned, he said, yeah, well cooling them there down here, and I went in and I met Chalice and the thing for me, I really wanted to meet DT and Spike for some reason, I don't know, because these team was always like the cooler dress guy and he had he played a great horn and Spike the trumpet, and I just like he had this this jazzy thing about him that was cool when he had a wittles Peak kind of cut there. He was just like a attractive kind of aura that they had.

00:29:14
Speaker 3: You know, you really knew these cats, Yeah, I knew them from just the music.

00:29:19
Speaker 1: In my mind. I was like, especially now, I mean, you know, I'm gen X and there's some gen Z's and Jen alphas after these alphas that pretty much like started with millennials, but also with gen Z and with Jens Alpha where it's just like a kind of blatant uh purposeful indifference, or it's where like I wouldn't think. I thought, oh, he's probably a new guy in a group and don't even know who Mickens is or who right, like, oh, some old guys want me to sing in their group and that.

00:29:58
Speaker 4: No, I never thought that, if you know question back then, like the albums they had the liner notes, they told you who.

00:30:05
Speaker 3: Guys were, so you would sit there.

00:30:07
Speaker 4: You didn't have a cell phone or anything, so you would go through the album and you're listening to it and you were finding out, oh this guy played that.

00:30:13
Speaker 3: Oh I didn't know.

00:30:14
Speaker 4: And I didn't even know Dtu played played the flute okay, And then I thought, oh, I.

00:30:19
Speaker 3: Said that was him playing that, Oh okay. So when I met him, I was like, yo, man, at that part you played on this, you know, stuff like that.

00:30:26
Speaker 4: So I was telling them little things that I appreciated and and you know, funky George and listening to that foot man, I said, wow, that's you know.

00:30:36
Speaker 3: So it was I was like in heaven and so to speak, you know.

00:30:40
Speaker 1: All that I said about your your velvet voice, and and you being a modern nat king Cole. I asked them in my class, like what was that process like of finally striking gold, because you know, he told a story about everybody's disco dancing album like Flopped, And they were in the store and doing an autograph session and nobody was there, and one girl was like who they supposed to be? Oh cool and gang ill like. She was like, ah, man, we gotta get a singer. We gotta get a singer. It's like desperation. But he says that he knew within the first three seconds you were the singer because you sounded like nacking Cole, And I thought, like that might have struck me odd because I would I would almost think like, okay, during that time period seventy nine, you gotta compete with all these gruff, all these I mean, either they're kind of over the top. I'm not saying primitive exotic, but you know, unless you come super animated, ah you like super Foot is animated, Boots and Parliament they're animated, or you're coming like you know, I mean the Mendingo, yeah, like or spiritual. You came very classy, but you came see in a way that wasn't like like, I don't know if Johnny Mathis would be like just walking down the hood, you know.

00:32:08
Speaker 3: What I mean.

00:32:09
Speaker 1: But you almost had like a you had some street confidence about you. But you also came off like you might have done two years in ROTC Strain in or in college.

00:32:25
Speaker 3: I actually did.

00:32:27
Speaker 1: As much as I love the Jackson's and they were my heroes. I'd never looked at them once and thought like you might be some college educated brothers. You know, the commodoret talk all the time about going into Ski Institute, but you know, but but they still wow. So for me, you were like the first look into what we might perceive day Lot.

00:32:52
Speaker 3: Sould to be or like yeah yeah.

00:32:55
Speaker 1: So for you, though, what was the audition process?

00:32:59
Speaker 3: Like?

00:33:00
Speaker 4: I didn't go in there like super nervous. And I think again, as I said to you, the process was the whole the whole thing included, meaning the music process from being young all the way through. So this feeling that I've had, the spiritual feeling i've had, was like, Okay, I'm here, so this is what we're going to do. And he said, let me hear you sing something. I said, well, what do you want me to sing? He said, anything, just make something up and he started playing these changes and I sang, you know, in my baritone voice, you know, and he said can you sing hi? And I said yeah, and I did some falsettled stuff, you know, and that's pretty much all I remember doing for him.

00:33:47
Speaker 1: Did you know what you were walking into?

00:33:51
Speaker 3: No?

00:33:52
Speaker 1: So no one officially said cool in the gangs looking for a lead singer said.

00:33:56
Speaker 4: The only thing I knew was that they were looking for some back round for me to sing background on the record. Okay, and again you know that's what I do, so okay is this where's the songs that you know?

00:34:10
Speaker 3: And my thing, I'm like that, what's the song? What are we going to do?

00:34:12
Speaker 4: And thinking it's going to be more in the vain of what they did before, you know, background, you know, Hollywood's well, you know, jungle boogie, all that.

00:34:20
Speaker 3: Stuff, you know.

00:34:21
Speaker 4: And when I met with I think it was Gabe Figarto the Light Records, he said, you know, Jay, that era has passed. And when I met Diodado, I was I don't think I was in the meeting, but he asked Gabe, he said, he said, well, who's who's going to sing this? And he said him this JT and he said, I want you to put the music around him his voice, and I'm said okay, okay, And you know, so I'm green at this time. You gotta understand, as far as studio work, I've never worked in the studio in any capacity, Like what's going to come?

00:35:05
Speaker 2: Was Diodado part of your audition? Like was he one of the people.

00:35:09
Speaker 3: Who was No, No, he wasn't in there at all. I met him a little later, but.

00:35:14
Speaker 2: He was already involved with them at that point.

00:35:17
Speaker 3: At that point, I was so everything was great, you know.

00:35:21
Speaker 4: I was like I knew I was school a gang, I'm in the studio, a house of music.

00:35:27
Speaker 3: They liked me, and when.

00:35:29
Speaker 4: We started working, we instantly I wouldn't say instantly, but we started working on music and we would go to I think on thirtieth West thirties Street at Daily Planet, just playing songs there.

00:35:43
Speaker 3: You know. So when dian Donald got involved, this.

00:35:48
Speaker 4: Whole thing was trying to mesh what they brought in, what everybody was writing. And at the time I wasn't bringing anything in as far as like songwriting anything like that. I was more like just feeding off of what's coming at me. That me, let me be here, let me listen to this guy, let me be over here, and and it was all interesting, nothing was boring.

00:36:10
Speaker 3: But the thing that was that was funny though.

00:36:12
Speaker 4: Was that they had three girls, three women I would say, singing background, and a couple of other.

00:36:20
Speaker 3: Yeah, something sweet and got.

00:36:22
Speaker 4: There was a couple other guys in there, and I remember them looking at me sideways, you know, and I'm up here saying, okay, I have to get my street vibe on, you know, because what's going on? Like what are these people looking at me like this for?

00:36:35
Speaker 3: So I'm thinking, do I have to make a.

00:36:37
Speaker 4: Phone call, you know, get some of my guys that come because this is all me thinking this is not them, and because I'm saying, why these daggers being thrown at me when I'm here to help. You know, I didn't ask to be here. I was encouraged and asked invited to be here. And I thought that they were good, and I said, well, we just keep them to myself. This is all internal, you know, how music is going on and people are walking around and I don't know any of these people.

00:37:05
Speaker 3: I don't even know cooling.

00:37:06
Speaker 4: Them really, so I'm trying to vibe and make sure I'm safe at the same time.

00:37:11
Speaker 3: And you know, I.

00:37:12
Speaker 4: Wasn't a person who hung out in the city, so that whole thing, you know, was new too, So you know, there's a lot coming at me.

00:37:24
Speaker 1: What were you doing to survive before you joined the band and how long was it until you felt secure enough that you were making your living as a member of Cooling the Game.

00:37:42
Speaker 4: I went to HBCU as well in Norfolk State, Virginia. I did two years there and it just wasn't my time to be in college.

00:37:51
Speaker 3: You know.

00:37:51
Speaker 4: I was all about music and I didn't study music there and I just had a difficult time, so I dropped out because music was my passion, you know. But when I came home, you know, I was pretty much bumming around. I was playing a lot of different bands and working odd jobs, got me an apartment and had a raggedy car, that type of thing, and you know, all of this happened, and then I get.

00:38:18
Speaker 3: The phone call from Cooling Them.

00:38:20
Speaker 4: But I think at seventy nine when we did the Ladies and Night album and we started going to Paradise Garage and all your different places for promotions and clubs and garage yes, yes.

00:38:34
Speaker 3: We did it. What was that?

00:38:36
Speaker 4: I knew that was going to raise the eyebrows, but we we actually had the record company did a promotion there because you know, it was the greatest sound system in the in the city.

00:38:47
Speaker 3: Right, you know, with the with those the speakers, the.

00:38:50
Speaker 4: Speakers right cranked up, you wouldn't even be able to hear when you left there.

00:38:54
Speaker 3: But we did a thing when they dropped Ladies'.

00:38:57
Speaker 4: Night at Paradise Garage, you know, which was a appropriate and I remember we went up and the DJ called us, say cool in the gang the record you know, and uh he.

00:39:06
Speaker 3: Said, cool ist here, JT's.

00:39:08
Speaker 4: Here and yeah you know that, you know, and they dropped it.

00:39:13
Speaker 1: Dude, I aspired to be his level of DJing like.

00:39:16
Speaker 4: That he was here, awesome man, and he dropped it and they hit the floor and everybody just looked at each other was just like okay.

00:39:26
Speaker 3: And the record company I think that they knew that that they had it right there.

00:39:31
Speaker 4: Because again, nobody expected it to sound like that. You know, they looked they were looking for all these horns and everything, and they were.

00:39:40
Speaker 3: Like, well, who's who's the who's the voice? Where that voice comes from?

00:39:45
Speaker 4: And you know, some people were like, nah, man, that can't be cooler then, you know, and some time I got I got a little flak back to that, because well, I want I want to hear the old stuff, the winds down, and they were telling me said, listen, man, we weren't eating on that up anymore, right, So yeah, it was It was awesome.

00:40:05
Speaker 3: Did I answer the question?

00:40:07
Speaker 1: Yeah?

00:40:07
Speaker 4: Yeah, because that that ladies night out, That's when I realized I could I start making a living and you know, bost some new clothes.

00:40:16
Speaker 1: I figured as well, this is probably one of the rarest chances I get to ask this question, So I'm gonna try to ask very careful. Okay, Okay, So what could a working class musician make in nineteen seventy nine? I mean, I'm basically asking what is a living in seventy nine? And I'm only asking this because, okay, like hip hop has distorted the expectations of what one should expect from this industry because you know, it's such a hustling culture and you see everyone just like their money away. And the thing is is that my manager kind of told us from the G eight, look, I'm not doing this. You guys aren't going to ball out of control, like you're going to be able to slide your mom some very significant petty cash monthly. You'll be able to have a half decent crib. And if I do my job right, you know, you guys will at least be able to make at least what a surgeon would make. At the time, I did agree with that, and I'll subscribe to it. Now I'm in a mind state where I want to be a daredevil and dream my highest dream like, but back then I was really small minded with it. But that said, you know, I think that's what at least for the twenty years of doing the Roots, you know before the Tonight show, that that enabled me to not have distorted expectations and stay focused, you know, like a lot of people after the third or fourth time, like it took us four albums to really get to a satisfactory place. But I think a lot of people would start to give up or start sabotaging their cells for And I'm asking this because there really wasn't the standard of hip hop baller lifestyles expected for not at all black singers. So what could you expect to make a living on as elite singer of been established ben with albeit with a new lease on life that they didn't have before, like NB eighties.

00:42:38
Speaker 4: Our situation, we didn't have that type of manager that you had. We were not given any direction as far as what you're going to make per se. My expectations were simple, Matt, you know how many records did we sell?

00:42:55
Speaker 3: Okay?

00:42:56
Speaker 4: We got six of us record label gets. Okay, so where's that was left over? And that wasn't happening now. I couldn't rock the boat at that point because I didn't really have the cachet, the the input, the in seniority to do that. So they were rationing out weekly income.

00:43:28
Speaker 1: So you were getting paid like a rookie.

00:43:30
Speaker 4: Like a rookie, right, but enough to live better than I was living just about a little bit more above that. And we were we were actually working so much that it should have been maybe five to ten times more than that, you know, because we were killing it. We were, and we were like working every day like like seem like we've never never stopped. So the money really wasn't adding up with the hits and how much we were touring. And my family started asking that question. I go, okay, well get your apartment. You got a decent car now, and I could when I wanted to slide my mother that money you were talking about, I didn't have as much as I thought to do that, because at the time, you don't really need a whole lot, you know, you just kind of still in the midst of the musical part, you know, and you just expect the money to be there. You got around people around you. I'm with cooling them. They've been around here since the sixties. You know, all this is going to come around.

00:44:37
Speaker 3: And it was fine, you know.

00:44:38
Speaker 4: When I started asking questions, that's when I started finding out, you.

00:44:44
Speaker 3: Know, all of the the side.

00:44:46
Speaker 4: Deals, all the things that were not there, and you know, you just kind of find your way through speak when you can't speak. And some of the people that we were working with, you know, I was told, you know, well, you can't talk to these people like that. I said, well, if I'm being a man, no one's gonna stop me from talking and speaking up for myself. I'm not trying to be a bad guy and sweet guy nothing. I'm just gonna say that this fit ain't right, you know, and this should be a little bit more balanced right here, you know.

00:45:19
Speaker 3: So that was always my position.

00:45:22
Speaker 1: Were the people that were running Delight Records, the same people by the time you got in the seventy nine position. You're tenure in nineteen seventy nine. Because Ronald told me that he was very careful with his words, but he's basically insinuating to me that the whole Jungle Boogee story was kind of at the insistence of some friends of ours.

00:45:51
Speaker 3: I would say that, yes, I heard that.

00:45:53
Speaker 1: Aah, that kind of hitman level.

00:45:56
Speaker 3: Okay, well, the same same people. Wow, I see, and you understand I was saying.

00:46:05
Speaker 1: I totally understand what you're saying.

00:46:08
Speaker 2: I'm so glad for once it's not my people who are just screwing up.

00:46:13
Speaker 3: It was you. It was you.

00:46:16
Speaker 1: Have you read Mars Leavey's hit Man?

00:46:18
Speaker 3: No not yet, No, No, I haven't.

00:46:20
Speaker 1: Now that's that's the book that exposes the you know, that's what built Jerry's, the whole game, Jersey, Sylvie Robbinson, all them people.

00:46:30
Speaker 2: So I'm sorry, let me let me interject here. So what about the publishing side of things though? Was that also sort of shady because you were you were writing some of these big hits.

00:46:40
Speaker 4: Yeah, because when I came into the group and I again, when I started peeping some of the stuff, it was more like they had told me they had a deal that was already set when I came in, So I kind of had to buy into what was already established. Right I was within a separate entity. I was now a part of the of the entity. And with that that means that I was I had to adopt some of the things that they had already had in order, and that really wasn't anything I could do about it.

00:47:16
Speaker 1: I do have a question about the repertoire when you first get in the group. You know, as I said at the top of the show, there's like almost five to six levels of the band's history that one could gravitate towards. If you're into a lot of early wrap samples, then you know, the first three years are you bag for kind of like the first real true steps into funk territory, not soul funk. There's there's an era of like you know, seventy four is seventy nine, and then there's the disco period seventy seven whatever, and then here comes the hits seventy nine and so on. When you guys are putting your shows together, is there me attention being paid to for the kind of pre wild and peaceful catalog songs or songs like NT or ron Hamburger or like a lot of these, or are they still a part of the show, like the instrumental part of the group.

00:48:23
Speaker 3: Not really, that was once you came in.

00:48:25
Speaker 4: Then it was just yeah, well sing not totally, but but you know, Ronald, everybody was like, listen, man, they want to hear the new songs.

00:48:33
Speaker 3: And I said, yeah, but we got the we have the best of both worlds here, guys. And I used to preach.

00:48:39
Speaker 4: I said, man, we have to play open sesame tonight, and it depends on where we were playing.

00:48:43
Speaker 1: Wait a minute, they wouldn't do that.

00:48:45
Speaker 3: No, we didn't that a hit.

00:48:47
Speaker 1: I'm talking about like obscure and stuff.

00:48:50
Speaker 3: Yeah, once in a while.

00:48:52
Speaker 4: And I said that we would because you know, we always had great segues into songs.

00:48:56
Speaker 3: You know, I picked up a lot of that from from working with with police, and I.

00:49:01
Speaker 4: Said, we can just sneak that in right here. We could sneak in tea right here, or you know, Googoo boxer, something like that. Anyway, nasty, nasty, little funky track man. And then of course opened sexity and some of the madness. I'm sorry, yes, some of the madness. They didn't have a problem with that. And Hollywood swinging. We would play that, but as far as involving all the other stuff that I was grew up on walking to school with, over time it just was moved out. And each album that we did, because we had like a almost a decade run of just top ten or top five hits, that those are the songs that they said people wanted to play, and the audience became more global, and the global audience didn't know all of those songs that we that you and I like, you know, the nts and all that they knew, celebration and all this.

00:49:57
Speaker 3: And I remember when we did Joanna. You know this, this is one of the most hurtful things that ever happened to me. And no, no, I was good, but.

00:50:13
Speaker 1: The way they're done.

00:50:17
Speaker 4: And we were doing Joanna, and we we had this black station and you know, we rolling everything and the an R guy was trying to get the record played. I don't think it was down with butter down there in Philly. Uh, it was something like a big station like that. But anyway, they said that it wasn't black enough quest. I'm telling you, I remember going back to my room and walking, just pacing in my room, back and forth. I don't know how long I did it, and almost like water coming out of my eyes right, And I'm saying, I'm thinking about Frankie Lineman and all these guys that paved the way to do all these things, from from you know, jazz to Leontine Price and all the I'm thinking about all of them that were you know, couldn't even dress in the dressing room, had to come in the back door.

00:51:11
Speaker 3: That all this is in my head.

00:51:12
Speaker 4: We were going through civil rights and you know, we're trying to find our way through. And I'm doing this song, this melodic song that is a part of me. And if it's part of me and me and the group, then it's a part of black America, you know. So how could somebody black tell me that it's not black enough? I said, what is black enough mean? So that was the first time I was hit with that. And I remember calling my mother and I said, Mom, I said, I said, they said I wasn't my singing ain't black enough? You know?

00:51:45
Speaker 3: And she said something, she told me, she eased my mind. She said, that's a good thing. That means that you're different.

00:51:53
Speaker 4: They try to tell you that you're supposed to sound like something they want you to sound like, but you don't sound like that, so that makes you unique.

00:52:03
Speaker 3: How you feeling?

00:52:06
Speaker 4: And it sobered me up because it reminded me that you've grown into this rainbow of styles from from the little transistor radio to the Philea Soul and then hearing all my heroes like the Motown and the Philly International Sounds and all this and Stacks Records and all these different great people and you're amongst those people now. So you don't have to try to be anybody but who you are, and that is a black man who can do rock, funk, jazz, love, the love the classics, Leontine Price, love Stravinski.

00:52:49
Speaker 3: You know what I mean, You can, It doesn't matter. It's not a colored thing with music. So she cooled my little ass down real quick and said, you know know who you are are, your tailor, and people have already given you the christen you. You know that that they accept what you are.

00:53:08
Speaker 4: So don't you start thinking that you have to be somebody else just because the radio station said this song ain't black enough. Maybe not for what they want to play, but globally the world has already said we love this.

00:53:23
Speaker 1: You also got the last laugh, bro.

00:53:25
Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, yeah, it was, it was, it was. It was a traumatic time, bro, you know what I mean.

00:53:36
Speaker 1: This is the dumbest question I'm ever going to ask in my professional career, but this is the only chance I get to ask it. When you shot that schlitch maat liquor bull commercial, come on, come on, there was never a real bull on the premises, right hell no, okay, I would.

00:53:58
Speaker 3: Have been gone before he broke through that. That was a pretty good pre uh editing right pre.

00:54:07
Speaker 1: Ai to this day when I go down a rabbit hole on YouTube, I literally watched all forty five minutes of every slitch won't like a Bull commercial, Very great running, and I always wanted to know they used.

00:54:25
Speaker 3: To edit it.

00:54:26
Speaker 4: I mean, I hope I'll didn't ruin it for everybody, but but yeah, we suggest you know, just looking running.

00:54:32
Speaker 1: Yeah I got, but that was that was.

00:54:34
Speaker 3: That was a hot commercial for a long time. It was.

00:54:37
Speaker 1: It was man like, Yeah, it was a big deal because you never saw like your favorites on that level. My dad especially liked it because sometimes they would juxtapose, like you know, I think you guys did a version and there was the platters as well.

00:54:52
Speaker 3: That we did went with the four tops or the four tops.

00:54:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, like yeah, my dad, my dad comes from you know, the fifties Erasode and it was like important to see the group seems like represented absolutely.

00:55:04
Speaker 5: Yeah.

00:55:05
Speaker 1: So when I first got my record deal, like I would say that my first splurge, Like, okay, I made it. It's not much. There was too much of a build up, but you know for me, sneakers and my record collection, that was it. Yeah, it was all I wanted to do in like for you, what was your first like extravagant, I want cheese on my whopper like.

00:55:36
Speaker 3: That type of thing.

00:55:37
Speaker 4: Let me see, I think I got my first Mercedes, okay, because before, as I said, I had my own apartment, you know, barely paying the bill, you know, at a Ramity car, so you know, the being showed a little little prestige. Man, you know, let me get a decent car because they could call that I had. I'm gonna tell you this, the call I had, it had didn't hit from the side on the passenger side, right so whenever I went to pick somebody up, I would drive and pomp on the driver's side.

00:56:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm gonna tell you something.

00:56:17
Speaker 3: We had some pride. You know.

00:56:20
Speaker 1: We had a group a group purchase. We got a land Cruiser that we all shared, whoever needed a land cruiser. I wasn't driving then, but Tarik would often dent that land Cruiser and get to the point where he would pick you know, his lady friends up only on the right side of the street, so that she could.

00:56:41
Speaker 3: Never see right exactly. That's exactly what I did.

00:56:49
Speaker 1: I see, I see. When you guys are on tour, do you have to do Don Boyce's at libs on Jungle Boogie?

00:56:58
Speaker 3: I did? Yeah, I tried.

00:57:01
Speaker 1: What was your first show like with the group first School? In the Gang show?

00:57:06
Speaker 4: This is I think this is before we actually started working on Ladies Night. I did a show with them.

00:57:14
Speaker 1: Oh you were singing with them even before?

00:57:16
Speaker 4: Yeah, right before we started. Yeah, I all needed one show. And then right after my audition, and I think I did an earth Wind and Fire song on their show.

00:57:27
Speaker 3: I sang a ballad. I'm trying to remember which one it was.

00:57:30
Speaker 1: Do you have a wonderful song?

00:57:32
Speaker 3: For you. Yeah, I don't know, maybe from the Head to the Sky album or something.

00:57:38
Speaker 1: Oh you went deep?

00:57:38
Speaker 4: Okay, yeah, something like that, you know, because he asked me because he just wanted to show the people that, you know, just I'll see how I you know.

00:57:49
Speaker 3: Or something. Yeah, you know, and it was very smart.

00:57:52
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean, you're the lead singer. How do you know things like eye contact and communicating with the audience and you know, make the whole room feel like, you know, the things that you will probably have to lodge one hundred shows under your belt to truly know, like back in your hand? Are you just being thrown in the river? Like singer swim?

00:58:14
Speaker 3: She was up?

00:58:16
Speaker 4: But see again, as I said, I wasn't threatened by that, not not about being on the front of the stage, because I was always that guy. Like if I had a band and then the band was called street Dancer or or or play a Soul, I was always JT you know, and got it.

00:58:33
Speaker 1: And we were thre if that wasn't your first show ever.

00:58:36
Speaker 3: Like you no, No, When I was thirteen we did the Apollo What was that?

00:58:41
Speaker 6: Like?

00:58:42
Speaker 3: That was scary.

00:58:43
Speaker 4: I think we're like thirteen. We were trying to you know, make this something we were going to do, you know, with like our little band. And in fact, we did the Intruders, Cowboys, the girls, We did the rehearsal. And I never forget at the Apollo, I never I didn't think it was going to be this raggedy downstairs right where all the guests were. And there was the stairs that you had led us, you know, to go up to the stage, and there was this huge rat trap under the staircase. And I'm saying, what the hell and We're all sitting there and I'm saying, okay, so you just blanket out of your mind. So that night, our biggest thing was to make sure that Sandman didn't hook us off stage.

00:59:27
Speaker 3: That was our goal. If we could do that, we got it. And we actually came in third place.

00:59:32
Speaker 4: And this guy, uh, this older guy that's saying nat King Cole by the way and on the piano, he won that night.

00:59:40
Speaker 3: But but we we didn't get pulled off. We just we were in the line.

00:59:44
Speaker 4: You know.

00:59:45
Speaker 3: Well first he was.

00:59:46
Speaker 4: Thinking hand clapped, you know. Third you know, he said, okay, you guys come off, and then he won. So we were just relieved that we that we didn't get pulled off by sand Man.

00:59:56
Speaker 1: Which member of pulling the gang was the most diplomatic and welcoming you into the fold because you're also a rookie kind of coming to an established house where you know, like even there was a point where Alan Iverson had to carry the bags of six ers that he was better than.

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

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

01:00:24
Speaker 4: I would say it was Calise and Cool because Cool at the time. In fact, when we first started going through the House of Music, he actually came up from Jersey City and picked me up from my home and he drove me down and back home. So Cool was more like like that guy. And you know we started hanging out as well. But he and I'll pay it to Calise, I went like to meet his mom, like Cools Calise's mom and stuff like that, you know, and I.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

01:04:11
Speaker 1: For me, this is a rare chance to find out, like what my life would have been like, you know, had I been born maybe twenty years earlier. Like if me and my best friend in high school still say we started a group in seventy nine instead of ninety three, then this is about as close as I'm going to get to. Hmm. I wonder what it happened if the roots came out like fifteen years earlier. So yeah, was it a strict environment when you entered the group? Like was there rules? Sit here too?

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

01:04:44
Speaker 4: The only thing when we were my first first show I did was till we stopped to get something to eat, and they were trying to convince me not to eat pork because they were only cool and police from most of the people thought the whole band was, but it was only the two of them, and that as you know, I didn't mind that give up bacon then okay food, so but as far as like musically, their vibe like through osmosis so to speak, it premeated you, you know, and my respect for what they did musically, I respected that greatly, So I didn't really want to, you know, upset the cart, you know what I mean. I was kind of like fit in, and I think maybe Calice felt that I had that type of spirit too, like them, because after a while, it was almost like we had.

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

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

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

01:06:15
Speaker 4: And in the beginning, I was so green that I had to I wasn't accustomed to singing with headphones. Somebody would just say, listen, just put one behind your ear, and that was kind of weird too, you know, because I'm listening to the room and everything. So I had I had had to really make adjustments, and it caused me to sing fragments like like like part of phrase, things like that, you know, you know you sing ladies tonight, you know, girl, y'all got one, you know, then we have to go back, go yah, you know, do it over again instead of singing through. And but I found out that the more that I studied the song and I knew it lyrically, then I could ingest the point of the song and that made it a lot freer for me. But I didn't really care if who was in the studio because I didn't really see him anyway. I would mostly see d O and like Jim Bonafon and maybe somebody who was in the corner. But the concentration was just trying to do the best performance. I really wasn't worried about the people got it.

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

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

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

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

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

01:08:04
Speaker 3: Oh?

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

01:08:16
Speaker 3: What?

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

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

01:08:21
Speaker 3: What?

01:08:22
Speaker 1: But Barry had a genius plan. He basically wanted to guarantee a number one debut. So it was sort of like she use what you want to play off the album and just play it. Most people gravitated towards Isn't She Lovely? But then weird enough, like almost nine months later they'll officially release I Wish Yeah, yeah, like a single. But it's like July of seventy seven.

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

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

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

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

01:09:46
Speaker 1: I'm in, you know, I'm in added all the keys to it. You're singing in a smooth falsetto. As a DJ, I was like, well, you know, okay, so the group that did this all the time was and I kind of ridicule them for this, but this is also how I live. At the Tonight show. You play any bark song for me now, and I'll tell you the forty five of what they were originally playing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

01:13:07
Speaker 1: That song is still in my DJ playlist, but now it has a new meaning because I played the Spanish version. Yeah, and when people like, you know, when people were playing the hook like I'll eq it iss such that they think they're in the regular version, and then when I put the Spanish version on, it's always the moments where they stop and they look at me and it's like they got processed for.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

01:14:46
Speaker 1: Yeah?

01:14:48
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah at that time, but beyond But more so than that, I just heard that his collection of and respect that he had as an arranger was pretty pretty watch bread. Everybody that that spoke of him spoke very highly of him. So when he would talk to us about music, it wasn't so much telling us this is that I'm going to put this major chord here and this minor. It wasn't that, it was just he would do it. And he would always do it with a smile, with his little cigarette in his mouth, you know, his piece, and you know, an unassuming guy. But when he brought the orchestra in to do the streaming work, that's when I opened my mind again and saw him. They you know, they greeted him as doctor, and I said yes. And it actually flipped me back to when I was in high school or what was it, maybe grade school, when my my music teacher took us to see how the West was Won in New York the movie but it was a screenplay, and I mean screen was on a movie was on screen, but there was a real orchestra. And that was my first time seeing an orchestra. So when I saw dal do that, you know, I had become accustomed to first be quiet and listen and understand how parts work together.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

01:17:47
Speaker 6: You like?

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

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

01:17:59
Speaker 4: Yeah, double yeah, biggest so but I still say, you know, too Hot has something that's romantic that because when I listened to it, you know, I could listen I remember how again, I was still learning things, and I could hear vocal things that I said, we'll do that now, you know, or things that, being more mature and able to do more with my voice now, things I would have tried something a little different. But I think Too Hot as a song, but Emergency as the album.

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

01:18:42
Speaker 3: Like?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

01:20:47
Speaker 3: Man.

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

01:20:49
Speaker 4: Like girls, girls, girls, some drugs? All right, But we didn't we didn't really really get into that. It was just again, the success became big within a year to two year period that it consumed us in a way that we did. I don't think that the group knew how to be, how to receive it in that way, you know.

01:21:18
Speaker 1: So for you to come in at seventy nine and you're pretty much coming into a situation one you know that bring success and you're kind of the reason for that success. Yeah, But I always wanted to know for the band members that were there before nineteen sixty nine, before the label deals and all that stuff, or Spike for DT, for Cool, for Calice, for George, what is success for them?

01:21:54
Speaker 3: Like?

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

01:22:04
Speaker 3: Right?

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

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

01:22:22
Speaker 4: It wasn't like at a certain point, you know, when we were at one time flying coach, you know what I mean, you're flying first class full you know, when at tension started happening, I started having my own car. Stuff like that happened. But when we hit the stage, it was about let's go take this, Let's put the flag down, you know, And and all of this stuff really helped me segue into my solo career, right, it was. It was a really proven ground, but I can't really speak to how they received it, whether they were overjoyed, because they never said to me me, you know, don't forget this is the group, you know, or don't think you're too big, and stuff like that that came from outside, you know.

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

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

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

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

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

01:23:46
Speaker 4: And I went out there and sound voices half gone, and I doing cherish and I closed. I closed my eyes and when I tried to open them, all I saw was no not an object, just a wall of red, like just red. And I froze and I opened my eyes again, and it came open, but then it went red again, and I got scared to death man, and I was able to walk backstage and poll I think poor. I pulled cool off of somebody. I said, listen play jungle Boy Holly was swinging something. Let me go back here and get myself together. And when I couldn't, I had to come back out and I left the stage that particular night. I'm back there and all my family was at the audience. You know, they ran backstage. People even fans were coming back saying, you know, what's wrong with what happened. They knew something was wrong because I've never been like this, and I'm sitting in my room and none of the guys came over to see how I was doing, except one.

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

01:24:56
Speaker 4: And that part hurt me more because I felt that their interest was more worrying about making the money the brand than a guy who who've been here since the really label was gonna was going to drop you guys in the seventies, and we got together and it was never I never claimed it was just me, you know, never had that attitude. But to get to this point and you don't even come back to check on the guy, I said, that's it.

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

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

01:25:27
Speaker 4: Yeah, that night, I called my family and I said, I got it. I can't do this anymore. So it was it was obviously back to your question that they must have felt something along the way, more than what I felt of them, because I never looked at them any other way except what we did. And uh, but that was that was that was a rough time because I was really really sick, but I never let on. And you know I've had that many times over the years. I was not well and I still did shows, you know, because I knew I had more responsibility just myself. You know, they had families, you know, themselves. We had records to break and you know, sacrifice, man, you know you can do this. And many times I'd just go back to my room and you know, taking mirror and gin sing and you know, all these different things. And I mean a clip for Adams, you know, he would he was into all of that and he would be me Golden Seal, and I'm.

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

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

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

01:26:53
Speaker 4: But again, and what I got into, you know, my solo solo dealing. You know, my first I met with Gerald Busby and Jerrold said, listen, man, I don't think you need to be at motow. You need to go talk to Clive and and I remember sitting with Clive and Clive played for me. You don't believe us. That's what friends are for. In his office, you know, with Luther and Stevie and and and at that time I thought maybe he felt that maybe I should be one that was singing that could do that and make a long story short.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

01:28:50
Speaker 4: Realized that they wanted me to do something like I had done before with cooling them, and I was already beyond that. You know, I wanted to be more of a eclectic artists and bringing the styles that I loved, you know, from rock and all these different things, and so I hoped it was this guy named Dennis mccowski. Okay, he introduced me to James ingram Ta, Vega, Rose Stone, Phil Perry, James you know, Jeff Pericaro, Paulino Da Costa, and I was like, okay, this is this. I love this, this this collection right here. And that's when I started working on Massive Game and plus publishers were sending me songs uh to uh to choose from, you know, and that kind of helped me a lot. But Louell, he was there the whole time trying to help me get a hit record, you know, because again I got paid well and the record company was just kind of letting me do what I wanted to do. And uh, you know, the first single, I still think they picked the wrong song. They picked the other song Sister Rosa, and I did a video with Michael Peters, you know who did Thriller, you know, Michael and all that stuff, and uh, we went did the whole video and everything like this, but they didn't jump on the record because I still think they should have chosen Romancia or some other Yeah, yeah, you know, and uh so that kind of a little bit of taste there. And you know, people were expecting j T the song. You know, it ain't no ladies night, you know, when are you gonna do that? And I was doing my interviews, I'd tell everybody I said, well I did that, and my mind isn't there now. And that's when I think Bobby Brown hit a new edition right and by Bobby was blowing the doors out, you know, right there, and.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

01:32:38
Speaker 3: No.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

01:34:17
Speaker 3: Almost like.

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

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

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

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

01:34:46
Speaker 1: Man.

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

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

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

01:35:05
Speaker 1: And I was like, I said, like Marvin marveling huh right, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly exactly. You know, there was a time period in which videos were not necessary but could be an option to help you sell a little more if you were trying to get your stuff played on like Top of the Pops or you know, if you couldn't get to Europe in time. What was the video process like? Because even that video for Misled, which I'll never understand, like are you just showing up and like, okay, it's a chase scene with an Indiana Jones and a bunch of white popes dancing around me, Like.

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

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

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

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

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

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

01:36:41
Speaker 4: Theatrical and the special effects. So and then the one thing that happened on that video was that we said how are we going to get the band in? And I wrote most of that concept. I said, well, you guys are going to be you know, incognito as well, and it's a dream state. So that's why you know, that happened. And when we came at the end and they were like JT, we got to go, man, we got a gig to do, they were in the dream and that's when they turned around. So Michael definitely influenced that as far as the video because remember MTV wasn't playing us, and Michael turned that around. So that's when the whole video thing for black artists started kicking in. And we knew that Michael had raised the bar, so we had to raise the bar because if you remember, on most of the charts, if we knew Michael was coming, we had to get our position first, you know, because you know we're going to knock you out a number one, but being there in the top five or top ten, that means in the stores your music was right there along inside his and it would help your sales.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

01:38:16
Speaker 4: But the thing that that bothered me was that they had mentioned i think on the news or something that you know, it was all of these big stars there and when we got there, there was no cameras and I remember telling DT, I said, you know, with the press man and all people telling about the press and we walked in. No one said, you know, okay, JT, you're going to be doing this and it's going to be doing that. We kind of just walked in the studio and there was everybody was just sitting around the room and and pill Collins and and Geldolfs and they were behind the board and they just kind of waved and you know, and later on I thought somebody mentioned that they wanted me to do the part that what tonight thank God, and I didn't.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

01:40:07
Speaker 4: There's many, okay, But I think going to Africa for the first time was monumental because I remember when we were at House of Music once and this is doing a part time and this agent came to the studio and asked us to play, and that's when everybody was refusing to place some city.

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

01:41:01
Speaker 4: When we got it, I said, I refuse to hang this up in my house until Mandela is freed, and I put it in the closet, and when he was freed, I took it out and celebrated that. But I think going to Liberia and then learning about the slave quarters and where our people were brought from the shores and things like that, the Ivory Coast up and down, you know, And I always felt like I didn't want to take money out of there like like I because it wasn't really built up as.

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

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

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

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

01:42:07
Speaker 3: One.

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

01:42:16
Speaker 3: Well?

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

01:42:29
Speaker 3: Man.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

01:43:08
Speaker 4: And also, you know, I brought everything from Hackensack High School to you know, the bands I was in too, you know, Jersey City. Anybody that I met along the way were a part of it. And that's including you, your group, the Philly sound Motown, so you know anything, it was like I was. It was like I was bringing all of you with me, you know. And then of course, you know, to find out that you were going to be with me, I'm like, oh, man, this is too good to be true, you know. So you know when I walked up and met you, you know, I was like yo, right in the middle of playing Yo, man, what's up?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

01:45:01
Speaker 3: Wow.

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

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

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

01:45:18
Speaker 4: The first time was a few years ago when we were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, got it. And that was the first time I had seen them and since the early nineties. I still went in there like, you know, just proud of what we had accomplished over the years. And you know, so they all came to me and we spoke and they were cordial and and in fact, Plice came to me and pulled me to the side and said, man, whyn't we get back together and do this again. And I was taken back because we did celebration that night, got our award, and you know it, we went our separate wates and again going back to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. That was the other thing that was kind of bittersweet that, you know, George and Charles d T. Clifford and they were there and it was like I'm sitting with their wives and their children, you know, there we're talking and things like this, and you know, I was just a little empty.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

01:46:55
Speaker 4: This project with my son, who was a filmmaker and a director, and we weren't getting anywhere, and so I said, listen, I got to stop touring. And actually COVID helped me because nobody was really working that much anyway. So like I've always done, I said, well, I want to do something that hasn't been done before, or something different and include different genres social media, film, music, and make a combination of all of those things and involve people like yourself, you know, your group, and different artists from different genres around and include like like the visual effects of things, and you know, to vote all the time to new kind of music and development, you know, and you know it's enhanced my knowledge, you know, or directing and writing in that genre without letting everything.

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

01:47:51
Speaker 4: It's like, you know, when you're trying to do something that hasn't been done, it takes a lot of attention. You know, you have to go through every little piece. Is not just one creative idea. The idea grew and now we're at a point where we're at I would say the script for example, you know, and all I can say to you is, I will promise to lead you on as we've developed this because it's something that hopefully will you will be a part of.

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

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

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

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

01:48:47
Speaker 4: And you know, and usually over the years, you know, we've had a collective of people doing so many different styles that we could pull from anywhere. You know, Now it just seems like there's some some things that are just not you know, when I listen to it, I'm not being fed as much. So right, you know, six years of like revising this this project, you know, I'm kind of looking at some things that I wrote down, combining like the mediums of music and filming. But it's it's like, I can I explain this. It will be something that will be future, but something with grassroots of the arts, Okay, something I think that everyone will be able to relate to.

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

01:49:36
Speaker 3: Man.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

01:50:54
Speaker 5: Man.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

01:51:49
Speaker 3: J T.

01:51:49
Speaker 5: That was.

01:51:51
Speaker 7: This is Sugar Steve. Thank you for listening to Quest Love Supreme. This podcast is hosted by mere Quest Love Thompson, Lijah Saint Clair, Sugar Steve Mandel, and unpaid Bill Sherman. The executive producers are a mere Quest of Thompson, Sean g and Brian Calhoun. Produced by Brittany Benjamin, Jake Payne and Liiah Saint Clair. Edited by Alex Conroy. Produced for iHeart by Noel Brown. West Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.