Ah, even, let, let's go back even before the Motown sound. Let's talk about before, used to be the Memphis sound. Now the Memphis, the Memphis sound was with Rufus Thomas, well… if you go back then, it still goes back to the same thing the musicians was known in Memphis. If you wanted to put a record out of Memphis they were all, they're called the Memphis musicians, the Memphis horns. So they didn't say by producers, the musicians. So when you move to Motown, you got the same thing, you have the musicians there. Like the, like Motown when Motown came up, Motown had this, they had this thing where the drummer would always go, by me being a drummer I always notice drummers, so this is one of the things that, that Motown used to do. They used to use a fill like this [drums] and that was, that would establish the Motown sound. Have you heard this? [drums] Every song from the Supremes, anybody had the drummer [drums] and all their songs started like that. They never go like [drums] and that was the Motown sound with a, with a tambourine on the sock cymbal [drums] had a tambourine and a conga drums, bongos, drums, it was always the musicians. They had good songwriters but it was the musicians. So when you heard a song when you, when you heard a song come out, come out of Memphis you know it was a Memphis sound. When you, when you hear this, you know that was, that was the Motown sound. When we, when, when Philadelphia, when I played I have, I have my own sound, I had, I used to use this [drums]. I used to use, well I still do, I used the skiff because I think the skiff is, is, is something that nobody uses on records. So I said, nobody uses, everybody was playing [drums] 2-4. Well I say, let me put some rhythm, a little bit more rhythm into, into the drums. So I would play like [drums]. It's more like a melody on a snare drum. So I tried to sneak it in on a record. A lot of people didn't want me to do that because they still had, I want it to sound like Motown. Everybody used to say, I want it to sound like Motown. I say, well, Motown did their thing, let's do ours so let's try some of our own thing. And working with different producers like Norman Harris, he's a producer and, and with Vince and Bobby Ely, I say them because they did a lot of productions, they gave me a chance to really play, they let me a chance to play some of the things that I wanted to play on drums and it didn't sound nothing like Motown, Memphis and, and nobody. So then anybody start - well let me try whatever Earl's doing. Let me try that skip beat now. So they start using the skip beat and so that's, that's what the difference in Philly. Then there's New York, the New York with Aretha Franklin and you had Purdie. Now Bernard Purdie I think was one of the greatest drummers in the world when he come in the studio because studio drumming and street drumming is two different things. You can play one way in the studio, most street drummers can't play in the studio and most studio drummers have a hard time playing in the streets. I don't think a lot of people don't know that 'cause when you in the studio, you, you have one thing in mind is keeping time when you on, on a, if you're a street, when I say street drummer that means drummers that never go in a studio, they can lose time, stick up a beat, pick it up, go anywhere they want to but in the studio you can't miss a beat, you have to keep time, be able to keep time, keep, make fills, lead everybody into where they're going to go 'cause a lot of times, a lot of times musicians might get lost on a paper by reading and not know where the hell they at. So if they know if a fill is going to come in there, they know they're back at that 16th bar. So this is the job of, of really, of, of a studio drummer. Purdie was the great drummers, to me, I, when, whenever he put a record out I knew it was him because he could play on a record, stop people playing the street. I mean he could take a record and do solo in the middle of a song. And, I mean, I, like some of Aretha Franklin's stuff is some of the most incredible drum work I've ever heard but we don't record like that so I know when, when, when Purdie play on the record then I know it's him because that is like the sound of, really like New York. And I won't say that, that who's better but I would say that, that this is our sound. And this is one of the things that I, I really would like to speak on because I feel that as, as a, as drummer and especially as a black drummer that a lot of the music that we created has gone and been forgotten about. The reason why is because now they're using computers so if you're using a computer and you have an artist, that means everybody is going to sound alike, you can't tell if everybody is using the same computer drums, if everybody using the same instruments, nobody is putting their really pure talent out, your, everybody is a machine. So if I have, so if I program a thing for, say, say, just take for instance if I brought in the O'Jays, I programmed it or I brought in, ah, ah, Earth Wind or Fire or if I brought in the Rolling Stones and I used the same program, the music is going to be the same. You might have a little different beat but there's nothing, that's why the records today they all sound alike. The records today, they all sound alike. You can't turn a record on and say, this is so and so. What you do now, you hear a record, you say, oh yeah, Baby Face did that. You don't say, oh yeah this is a, this is a Philadelphia record, what you say now, or it's a Baby Face record or, you know, ah, it's producer's day. So, this is where the music is, has been and that's where it's at now. It might sound a little strange but musicians just don't play on records any more so everybody is sounding alike. One time they knew it was, it was me on drums or, or Purdie or Bohannon out of Motown. Now, it's not that way anymore.

... disco sound.

My favorite. Yeah, well actually, you know, ah, I was playing, I was playing that groove before disco even was thought about. It's like the 4-4, 4-4- on the bass drum and that's about all disco, that's all disco really is but I, I changed it around. Like when disco first came out everybody had the [drums] the 4, like the 4-4- here. And that's what's considered disco. As long as, as long as you have the 2-4. [drums]. So that's the groove that they killed. So what I start, what I started doing because everybody was putting the, the same thing on and [drums] calling it disco. So what I did I decided to kind of change it up a little bit. So I used to play, especially on my "Boot the Tramps" record, I would play more or less a groove like [drums] which give, which gives the snare drum the attention to take away from the 4-4- beat. So you didn't hear this [drums] but it's actually really the same thing it's just that I put more rhythm into the, I put a, I put a rhythm pattern into the snare drum which gave it more or less like a Phil Autry sound where it would go [drums]. So one thing you hear is a snare drum and a sock cymbal and you forget about the disco 4. So now that's, that's gone too.

Sock cymbal sound.

Oh yeah I couldn't, I, I really couldn't play without a sock cymbal because a sock cymbal to me is, is, to me is more important than anything because this is, this is where all the blues starts, [drums] and if you're going to do like a O'Jay thing, you got to [drums]. Everything, really, in, in being a drummer everything goes off of here. I don't care what else you do it's got to come from here. If you're playing, if you're playing like this here [drums] all the rhythm is really up here even if you use [drums] the rhythm is really here, if you take this out then you have nothing on your own. People don't know that, they just think that it's based on the snare but it's really into the sock cymbal, is where your rhythm, because you don't even need this, you know and, you know, just speaking as, just speaking as a drummer, this is my favorite. And this break and I'm finished 'cause they ain't nothing else you can do.

Tell me, when you worked with Tom Bell.

Please, that's, that's a joke, Tom Bell is my buddy, you ask, that, that's the hardest, I would say that's my, that's the hardest person to work with. You know why? Because he's so intelligent in music and Tom Bell, I would say Tommy Bell took me to another level in, in drumming because it was for the first time I, I had no freedom to really do what I wanted to do. I had to really read. I mean I had to read from the first part of the chart, sometimes the chart would wrap around the drums and I might only have maybe like a cymbal here [cymbal] and maybe a [drums] and I might.

Thank you, we got to change. One more time. ... very short.

Yeah, Tom Bell, boy.

How would you feel going into a session with Tom Bell?

Tom Bell, when you say Tom Bell you have to be talking about one of the, to me, one of the greatest arrangers and songwriters around because I think, when I work with Tom Bell is when I really got my education in music because when you go into a studio with Tommy Bell you don't go in there saying, well, I'm gong to play, I'm going to play what I feel like playing today because you go in there and you have to be able to read exactly what's on the paper. If flies jump on there you better play it. I'm going to tell you, actually this is, this is really how I learned how to read because I had to learn how to read because Tommy writes out everything from the cymbal to the bass drum. And I say, well, now I'm going to school. And we did the Spinners, Johnny Mathis in Philadelphia, Stylistics. Speaking about the Stylistics, "People Make the World Go Around" was one of the hardest songs I've ever played in my life and, because it goes from like a 4-4- to 3-4, back to a 2-4. I mean it goes everywhere in the song. So you have to play, keep time and read at the same time. It's just not, like most of the time when you're playing you could just glance at the bars and read it but this, you have to read every single bar, so you can't take your music, you, you can't take your eyes off of the music and then he's standing there conducting. So you got one eye here and one eye on the music. So when I had to play "People Make the World Go Around" I had to go, I had to go from a one beat to another beat then, then stop, then, I mean we would play stuff like, [drums] then maybe stop, add one little touch and [drums] this is the kind of things he writes. But it was great because it's, it's, it was a challenge, it was something that really taught me to be a, a fine musician because I had to, I had a challenge of something I had never, I had never did before. And when, when you hear it after a finished product you say, geeze, was I playing that? I mean it's really great. And all the stuff, I mean when the stuff started coming out and going gold, you know you feel, you feel like you've played a big part in that but a lot of the people that hear the record they say, well, they don't care who played drums. They don't know who played drums or guitar or, or anything on the record. And it, it makes you feel kind of bad because I mean you really sat in there and, and it ain't about the money, it's about your pride and, and I mean we used to, we used to make phone calls and, and to other musicians and say, look, I have a record coming out like, like, like Purdie would play on Aretha thing and, and I would hear something he played on Aretha and I said, I'll fix you wait, wait till the O'Jays come out and when the O'Jays record come out, he listened and you, and it would be like, it would be like fun because I would listen to his records and he would listen, listen to mines and this is the only thing that musician have is other musicians that really appreciate what you, the work that you do. I mean people hear a record they don't really, they don't really care about whose playing on it or, or how it was done. And Tommy Bell gave me that experience I would say because he, he gave me some of the toughest music to play. So when people heard it they say, man, he's a great drummer, you know. And they don't know the sweat, I mean it takes because if, if, if, if one little cymbal tap was, was off the wood, they would stop the whole song, I don't care where you're at. You know so you be afraid to make a mistake, you be sitting there, please let me get through this.

What's a tramp?

Well as, as I said, I've been a drummer for years but then after a while, after playing for, for all these artists I mean I played for, you name him, I played for him. And all you get was a pay, just a paycheck. And the money that you get for playing, I mean just pays the bills and nobody know who you are. So I said to myself, I said, geeze, I'm doing all this work and I can do what they are doing, I can do that because being a bass singer, I grew up around street corners anyway and, and I say, well I, I, I'm going to form my own group. And by being in the studios I already had the musicians there so I put a couple of dollars up, put my own money and I went in the studio. And I was really recording myself, being a bass singer I said, well I'm going to record this song. This was a song by Judy Garland was recorded in 1938 and the Coasters did it on the back of "Yakety Yak". It was a song - "Zing went the Strings of my Heart" which went, Dear when you smiled at me I heard a melody. So by being a bass singer I could sing anyway. So I went there and recorded. I was recording myself and I went and hired a whole group called the Volcanoes, ah, who I used to sing around the street corners with, has, had a record out called "Storm Warning". And some of the guys came in and, and really helped me out 'cause I really couldn't afford to, to just pay everybody to, to come in so a lot of musicians came in and they just played. And I shopped it and shopped it around. I said, I, I just want to see if I can get me a deal. And everybody turned it down, Atlantic turned it down, everybody turned it down. Then Neil Bogart whose, who passed on now, but I, I loved this guy because he started my career, he put it out and it was my first big hit. So then I, I still didn't give up my drumming because I was still singing and then coming in the studio and, and working too because drumming was my first love. But then after that I started getting some bigger paychecks that started to be my first, my second love and I started, started traveling. So then I put out, ah, "Where the Happy People Go" was a disco hit and "Hold Back the Night" and some other songs. And then I put out a record called "Disco Inferno" which was taken from the "Towering Inferno" movie, from the, the roof, that's what it's really about. And it was a big, it was a pretty big, it went R and B, then it died. Then we had a club in, in New York called 2001 Odyssey in Brooklyn which is, which is a all white club. But this was our home base club like in, in New York. And they filmed, they filmed the motion picture "Saturday Night Fever" there. So by it being our, by our home club there in New York, John Travolta, wanted to dance on "Disco Inferno" and they put it in the movies. So the movie was such a big success that we automatically crossed over and start work., wherever the movie went we went. And it's very hard for black artists, speaking about black artists to, to cross over to white, when I say white as being accepted because you are being accepted in the music business because for you to go to the top of the 100 charts you have to have blacks and whites behind your records unless you just strictly hip-hop and you have a, a million, ah, black artists which is very rare, black fans. So, I felt pretty good about that because we were, we were actually, we were, we were the only black, ah, artists in the all white movie. And I felt kind of good about that because, because it took us all over the world. We went all, we went everywhere that the movie went and, ah, people accepted us as one of the number one disco groups in the world. So, ah, quite naturally I felt good especially being able to, to cross and stay, stay there. I mean so, so now, even now we have like fans all, all over the world and we're still, we're still on tour.

…?

Oh, I'd like to mention to about the fact of, about the drums and the Grammy and, and MFSB, you know, because a lot of people don't know about, about the fact that, ah, the MFSB the Gamble Huff thing won, won a Grammy.

…

Oh yeah, we were talking about the, I feel like, like in my lifetime as a musician and also a singer I, I'm one of the few people to receive two Grammys on the same album doing two different things. Like with "Saturday Night Fever" Cagey was on "Saturday Night Fever" a lot of people don't know which is MSFB and we received a Grammy for that. And "Disco Inferno" was on the same album and I received a Grammy for "Disco Inferno. So receiving a Grammy and having a gold record as a drummer and receiving a Grammy and a gold record as a singer was a big step in, in my career because there's not many artists that ever do that in one album.

…

Okay, this is the, the, the skip beat is something that I, I created because I like rhythm and I, I've always felt that when I hear records or when I heard records from the old days, it was always like a, a straight, more or less like a straight 2-4 beat like this, like, [drums] and that was good but I've always liked to, to, to put rhythms into, into one beat and, I don't know, to me it just sounds a little funkier man 'cause I, 'cause I mean like even with James Brown, man, they was, they were doing a little more than just, a, a, a straight beat so I developed a thing where I say, maybe I can play rhythms on my left hand, still keep the same groove and change up a little bit which, which is like playing if, if my left hand was there we could play like a piano, it, it would be playing a rhythm along with the beat and it would sound, it would sound something like this. And it, it adds like, like a little funk. I, that's one think I like, I like us to stay, I like to send one thing, just a message for me to kids, if I can.