met these two DJs from WDAS Radio in Philadelphia, Sonny Hopson and Perry Johnson, and we set up our own label, Bam- Boo,” he says. Free from the constraints of the majors, Birdsong went deep: “Whereas with a major label, you had to get approval for this and get approval for that, now I could just do my own thing. And that’s what I did.” Released on Bam-Boo in 1975, Dance of Survival found Birdsong at
my vocal arrangements.” While disco was about to transcend its underground roots, Birdsong and Ayers had been working on a more upbeat dance-floor sound that would reach its zenith on the 1977 LP Lifeline . The LP included “Running Away,” Roy Ayers’s most famous song apart from “Everybody Loves the Sunshine.” Not only cowritten by Birdsong, the track also featured his vocals up front in the mix. “You can actually hear my voice on ‘Running Away’ more than Roy’s,” he says. “Running Away” would become an anthem at clubs from the Loft in New York to Crackers in London. Another Ayers and Birdsong collaboration that tore up dance floors worldwide was “Freaky Deaky,” which would appear on Ayers’s Let’s Do It LP.
reworked by Erykah Badu as “Amerykahn Promise” with Edwin on coproduction duties with Roy Ayers). While the RAMP LP was avidly devoured by beat seekers in the years to come, Birdsong’s most heavily sampled LP was his self-titled 1979 solo return and his only LP on Philadelphia International.
“I had already recorded the LP and played it for Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff, and they offered me a deal,” he says. “So as a result, that was different to what people like Teddy Pendergrass and other artists were doing with Philadelphia. I was one of the first to come in with my own songs and own production; I didn’t use Kenny or Leon to write anything. So they just let me do my own thing, which I loved.” The LP was recorded at the New York branch of the legendary Sigma Sound Studio. Around this time, Edwin was a regular at the city’s underground clubs: “I went to Paradise Garage all the time, and Larry Levan and I became friends; and of course before that, there wasTee Scott at Better Days.That was a very free place, and I always observed closely what was going on.” Those nights inspired the hazy, cosmic boogie of “Cola Bottle Baby,” a wonderfully left-field track that still sounds progressive today. Sampled by Daft Punk on “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” in 2001, it most recently provided the hook for Kanye West’s “Stronger.” Birdsong also includes the electro-funk of “Goldmine” and the out-there disco of “Phiss Phizz.” Referring to the 12-inch promo-only flip to “Goldmine,” Birdsong says,“Tee and I did a mix of ‘Phiss Phizz,’ and we gave it to Larry [Levan], and he loved it,” says Birdsong.
his most individual on an LP that became a cornerstone of astral soul.“We were never following in the trail of other things that were out there,” he says. “That was the jazz thing in me; you know, just doing your own thing without copying someone’s style or concept.”There was one figure whose ideas particularly inspired him though. “Sun Ra was playing at a club called Slug’s [Saloon] on the Lower East Side, and Michelle and I would go there and listen to him a lot. He was very exploratory, and his approach led me down a tunnel of freedom.” This new freedom can be heard on the tripped-out soul of “Your Smile Gave Birth to My Idea,” perhaps the LP’s masterpiece. “I recorded the LP in a studio where Kool and the Gang had been, and they had left their Mellotron. So I used that to produce the sound,” he says. Another killer track on the LP is “Night of the Full Moon,” one of Birdsong’s most unearthly productions. “From studying music, I always liked secondo harmony, using seconds and minor seconds; so that’s how I created that strange feeling,” he explains. The 1976 Roy Ayers Ubiquity LP Vibrations would see Birdsong join Ayers as co-arranger and producer as well as writer of “The Memory” on what was Birdsong’s biggest involvement on a Ubiquity LP. “I would take Roy’s songs that were instrumentals and I would give it lyrical and melodic content. So when you hear things like ‘The Memory,’ those were all
Discovered by Roy Ayers at a showcase in 1976, Cincinnati group Saturday Night Special were propelled into rare-groove folklore when they were renamed RAMP (after Roy Ayers’s production company) and invited into the studio with Ayers and Birdsong. “We couldn’t believe what was happening. It was like a dream come true,” the band’s John Manuel told Wax Poetics back in 2007. Come into Knowledge was one of Birdsong and Ayers’s most serious collaborations as writers and producers. If there was one track that captured the space- soul sound that would inspire so many for years to come, it was “Daylight,” sampled most famously by A Tribe Called Quest on “Bonita Applebum.”“We were told that that sound was what impressed A Tribe Called Quest,” recalled John Manuel. It was a sound built around Birdsong’s vocal arrangements of the band’s two singers, Sharon Matthews and Sibel Thrasher.“He was marvelous with the vocals,” Matthews explained. “He had us doing things we didn’t even know we could do.” The LP also included the biting soul-jazz of “The American Promise” (later
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