You were telling me as a businessman, Kenny was very thorough, and pushing himself into it. Can you just tell me how he did that with the marketing?

Kenny was a unique person in the fact in that beside being talented musically, uh, he was a good businessman. And uh, he took an active part in marketing his records. In the early days he made sure that, that he went out and he visited the radio stations, the people that he wanted to play his music. He made sure that they knew who he was, they knew what he looked like, they knew what his music was, they knew how to spell his name. And he developed a personal relationship with a lot of the movers and shakers in radio, uh, and I think that, uh, uh, it added to his, his success, the fact that he took the time to be able to address a guy by his first name and uh, knew about his family and so forth.

Motown was a big specter in a sense moving over the music business. Everybody wanted to emulate the success that Motown had. Do you think that Kenny and Leon were really influenced my Motown?

One of the biggest forces that I, I guess one of the, the, the sound that preceded the Philadelphia sound was really what was happening in Motown. And because they were such, so much groundbreaking music came out of Detroit, as studio person, as a guy that was trying to be the best at what he did. Often I would try to emulate the sounds I heard from Motown and so forth. And that's something I would say that, that Gamble and Huff never looked for. I think that they always heard the sound that they always heard the sound that they wanted. You know, they wanted, um, Kenny was always, always wanted the predominance of the grand piano in his music. He always wanted the predominance of the grand piano in his music, he always wanted, one of the last touches, whatever I did to a mix, when I thought I had it just perfect, he would come in and push the piano a little bit, push the bass up a little bit and say, let's take it. But Motown was certainly in the, in the wings of Gamble and Huff entering into the business, Motown was already there. But I think that, uh, uh, in the, in the urban or black music world, Motown to us was considered to be black bubblegum.

You mentioned how it was so ironic that a lot of folks were looking at, one of the folks that Motown said that, you know --

I knew I wanted to go there. What, an interesting thing is that as an engineer always trying to uh, to uh, always thinking that what's on the other side of the fence is greener, we had an opportunity to meet a couple of people from Motown. Uh, Mickey, Mickey Stevens had just left Motown and came to Philadelphia to talk to the, the rhythm section, some people that he knew, and we were, we were chatting about the sound, the sound and how do you do this, and how do you that. And he said to me, you know, he said, you might be looking at Motown, he says, but us in Motown, he said, we're looking to Memphis. And it turned out to be that from every vantage point in the business everybody's looking over their shoulder and saying, boy, how do they get that sound, how do they do that thing? One of the very characteristic things about the sounds of that time was not only was there musical, there were musical influences that were produced by the community, the church or what they did on the street corner, doo-wop. But there was also the technical restraints of one recording studio over another. So it was very easy to tell, to hear a couple bars of a song and know that it came from Memphis, or that it came from Motown, or it came from New York, or it came from California. Each area, each studio had a distinctive sound. Today with the, uh, with the, uh, technology, we can sample and make anything sound like anything. So some of the, a lot of the personality in music is gone today.

There are two definitions I'd like to get from you. What is rock 'n' roll?

I would say to define rock 'n' roll would have to be that it's, it is modern folk music. It is the natural music that comes from the people. Therefore if folk means music from the people, then, then, rock is an expression, is a modern expression of music. It's not chamber music, it's not classical music. It's what comes naturally from, from our human experience today.

What is funk music?

Uh, get down. Funk? Funk is, uh, to me, funk is uh, earthy. It's basics. It's, there's nothing pretentious. Uh, it's the rawest, it goes to the rawest basic human emotions. Does that make sense?

I think the, uh, the uh, I don't want to say the end of the Philadelphia sound, but certainly the trend into other styles had, was influenced a lot by technology. Uh, today, uh, a person can go into a, into his living room and recreate a symphony orchestra if he so desires. And while that's, uh, desirable from the standpoint of a producer doing an arrangement for a song or whatever, it, it really takes away the human interaction. One of the, one of the strong points of what happened at Sigma and what happened in Philadelphia during the '70s was that, that, uh, that seven or eight human beings sat in the room together and made music together. They all contributed, they all had input, they all gave their interpretation. Uh, uh, with the advent of the synthesizer, a person doesn't need the other eight, and therefore I think that the creative mix doesn't occur the same way. Uh, time will never go backwards. The people that say the big bands are coming back or whatever. The trends go on and they evolve. I think that, that one of the exciting things that I see today is that people are learning that, with a seasoned good musician, they can make a record in half the time that it takes to piecemeal a, a, a production with machines.

What do you think about the way Stevie Wonder used that technology?

Well, Stevie Wonder was one of the, probably one of the leading proponents of the, of the, uh, of the use of synthesizers. He was used as the beta test site for many a new, new computer. Stevie was uh, Stevie is one of those people that's so creative, I mean uh, I had the pleasure of working with him a couple of times, a couple of projects. And uh, Stevie was so creative, uh, I just think that this story is interesting enough that, uh, first of all Stevie didn't pay much attention to what time of day it was. Because uh, three o'clock in the morning is just the same as three o'clock in the afternoon from his perspective. And I was working with him one night very, very late, and we were working on the album, "The Secret Life of Plants." And uh, he was overdubbing multiple parts. He'd play the drums and he'd play the piano and so forth. And we were working on a song and he was walking, and he came in to hear it. And uh, he uh, I'm going to have to put a drum part now, ahem, I'm going to play this and that. I'm going out. And he walked out into the control room, and as he walked toward the drum booth, his knee hit the piano, piano stool, and he sat down at the piano stool and he wrote another song. I mean, you know, it was, something came into his head and he wrote another song. He was so creative that he literally put this down, and it was one of the songs that was used on the album. Um, another thing that I think was interesting with Stevie, he'd just, he'd say, he'd ask you what machine it was. In other words if he was walking toward a cassette machine, he'd want to play a cassette, he'd say a, uh, what kind of tape machine. And I'd say Nagamichi. And he immediately knew where all the buttons were. I mean his retention and his, his ability to uh, to see was incredible. What's that got to do with technology.

All of this story comes alive when you deal with the person. We can be as academic as we want to, but what comes alive is the personal story. That does speak to Stevie's affinity to the technology.

Yeah, I, you know, he was incredible. I mean, he, uh, he, uh, he -- remember he used a lot of machines, he used a lot of equipment that was really based on, based on sight. A synthesizer, and he, and apparently he just drew a picture in his mind and burned it in there.