he was still singing. I had him come by the house, he sounded great, and I started working on some songs with him. At that time, I had some clout with Salsoul and I got him signed. Musically, it’s the whole Skyy group again. The girls are singing, Sol and the guys are playing. We had a great time doing that record. Tommy McConnell and Gerald Lebon [drums and bass] were probably the best rhythm section I’ve ever worked with. It was meant to be very unlike Brass, and very unlike Skyy. Even though it was the Skyy guys, it was almost like we were trying to be schizophrenic, to have a different musical persona. I have so many nuances that I want to express, and Brass wasn’t always the right structure for them. Cameron was a good way to do some male vocal things.
record with Earland. I love jazz, and Charles is great, so I said sure. Charles was a really hip, old-school jazz dude. He called you “babe” and everything! The objective was to make him more appealing for contemporary audiences, which at the time meant a disco sound, but keep the jazz to have some continuity. My task, in other words, was to get his music into the clubs, but include some jazzy stuff. I set out to write the record while being on the road with Brass Construction. During this time a crazy thing happened—we almost died doing that project! Charles’s band had done a gig at a club and I joined them the morning after the gig to run through some of the songs I’d written, to introduce the tunes to the band. We started playing, the track was sounding great, and all of a sudden the guitarist fell over. Now, I thought the track was cool, but knock you off your feet? Come on! [ laughs ] Next thing you know, the bass guy is passing out, and Charles is nodding off! Luckily, someone had the presence of mind to open a door, because there was a gas leak in the club. We all had to go to the hospital in an ambulance! I wrote “Over and Over” and “Let the Music Play” and again got the Skyy guys to play on those tracks for the recording, with the girls doing vocals. I used Earland’s guys on the jazzier tracks.
Tamiko Jones “Can’t Live Without Your Love” (Polydor) 1979
Jones, who gained fame through her ’60s work with Herbie Mann, lent her name to this huge New York underground record. It continues to be a favorite of David Mancuso and many of the Loft-influenced DJs. I met Tamiko through John Abbey; he owned Blues & Soul magazine in the U.K. She was his wife, and he asked me if I’d do a song with her. She had something before that that was pretty big, “Let It Flow,” on TK Records. So I wrote something and had the Skyy guys come in and play. Gerald Lebon was on bass, I think Solomon might’ve actually played drums, I played keys, and we just rocked the track. Carlos Garnett [soul jazz great who also played on Denroy Morgan’s hit “I’ll Do Anything for You”] played sax. Garnett Mimms “What It Is” (Arista) 1977 This song, a change of pace and something of a comeback for Mimms, reached #44 in the U.K. pop charts. The 12- inch was available in the U.S. only on promo but became the first official Arista 12-inch in Europe when it was released there. Garnett was from Philly, but the guy putting the project together wanted something like what we were doing in New York. I came up with this chorus, “girls do it, boys do it.” I still have the scrap of paper I wrote the lyric on. I got the Brass guys to play on that track; Larry Payton played drums, Wade played bass. Sharon Williams [a well-recorded session vocalist] came and did vocals.
Full Circle “Working Up a Sweat” (EMI) 1986
They were great guys, very funky. From Al, the singer, who had what I call a “whiskey voice,” to the musicians. Larry Marsden was a great guitarist and Ronny, the bass player, was a bass player of doom—just incredible. They were another band from East New York [Brooklyn], whom I saw and liked what they were doing. They were originally called Motivation, but I thought the name was a little corny, so we changed it to First Circle and then Full Circle. We got a deal with EMI and put out “Working Up a Sweat,” a thing that me and Chango, the drummer, wrote. He had the hook and I programmed a DMX beat and wrote verses. We had the Latin Rascals chop it up; they were amazing, cutting little quarter-inch pieces of tape and actually making new beats by measuring out spliced segments. I remember seeing the reel with all these pieces of masking tape flying by, it was fantastic! That was done at Arthur Baker’s studio. .
This article originally appeared in Wax Poetics Issue 10, 2004.
Charles Earland Let the Music Play (Mercury) 1977
I knew the guy who was managing Charles Earland at the time. He was a fan of my stuff. So he talked to me about doing a
52
( opposite ) Promo photo of Brass Construction, with Randy Muller on the far left.
Made with FlippingBook - PDF hosting