Couest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio.

This classic episode was produced by the team at Pandora.

What's up, y'all, This is Quest Love and this is QLs classic in which we hear at Quest Love Supreme tack into our archives to bring you some amazing stories from past episodes.

This was a really great episode with Ray Parker Jr.

Talking about his life as a musician, working with Barry White, with Stevie Wonder, with sha Ka Khan, hanging with Prince, giving Quincy Jones stories, even and even Huey Lewis h This is one for the music fans.

We really hope you enjoyed this Quest Love Supreme episode with Ray Parker Jr.

So Supremo, Sun sup Supremo, roll call, Suprema su Supremo, roll call, Suprema s S Supremo, roll call, Suprema Something Supremo, roll call.

My name is Questo.

Yeah that understood.

Yeah.

Let me tell you something, yeah, must it makes me feel good?

Suprema something something Supremo, role called Suprema Son Son Supremo, roll call.

My name is Fante.

Yeah.

My favorite album is Voodoo.

Yeah, because that woman needs love.

Yeah, just like you Doro Suprema.

Son Son Suprema.

Roll called Suprema something Suprema.

Roll call.

My name is Sugar, Yeah, I love to ball.

Yeah, you know my number?

Yeah, so who You're gonna call.

Something something Suprema.

Roll call Suprema so something Supremo.

Roll call.

I'm un pay bill.

Yeah, there's something strange.

Yeah, you stole my ship.

Yeah, Braves.

Suprema, roll call Supreme Supremo role.

Yeah yeah.

Yeah, roll call Supreme.

Roll Supreme.

So my name yeah, No, I'm not jail.

Yeah, but if I would, mister Parker, Yeah, I'll go up any hill.

Roll call Supremo.

Roll call Suprema so so Supremo.

Role call.

My name is Ray, Yeah, Taurus born in me.

Yeah, I'm my love is strong.

Yeah, brab My gets I play with it.

Supreme Supreme, roll call Supremo, Supremo.

Role called Supreme Supremo, Role called Supreme.

Role.

We have an amazing show for you today.

Our guest is someone I really wanted to get it on the show since we launched it.

He's an incredible talented singer, songwriter, guitarist, and producer.

He's worked with some true legends of soul, including mister Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gabe, Barry White, so many more, ladies, gentlemen.

Mister Ray Parker Jr.

Is on the show today.

Now before we bring him on, let's check it in quickly with Team Supreme.

How you doing, ma'am.

I'm doing okay.

I'm kind of tired.

I think I have decision for you, Like I'm tired of making that damn decisions.

I'm mentally exhausted.

So now me and me and my lady are finally moving into our house.

And so now you've been moving in this house for the longest, dude, it's like because it's just been a lot, man, It's been like, well, hell, I ain't been home.

I've been running around with y'all all day.

But no, man, but no, it's just that.

And then it's like changing bills, like getting stuff from your old place to your new place, and like I'm working, my ladies working, the kids is working, and it's just it's just.

A fucking lot, man.

The kids are working house well, I mean in school, and you know what I'm saying, And like, well, this is a question from a person that's not a father.

Okay, okay, So how what's the report card system.

Like now, do they just email you the report?

Oh?

Man, yo, the report causes?

Do they bring it home to you?

Nah?

Nah?

They come straight to your hands?

So no more.

I can't.

I can't.

Uh Ferris beauting my way out of the nah bro like.

This, everything is electronic.

You can log on, you can see they skipping class.

You can see like absences Tony's Day.

Guys, do you live in a police state?

I think we all right?

Now?

Okay, yeah, so serious helicopter parenting right there?

All right?

I just want to play one Ray Parker Junior song and Radio before he comes in because we need to relax so he's gonna have all these crazy stories to tell us.

I want to play one of my favorite joints off of the two places at the same time.

Record It's uh Tonight's to Night by Ray Parker Jr.

And Radio This question Love Supreme only on Pandora.

Come on.

The mood, that's right, m M.

If we want to get down to night to night, tell Thomas at us something we don't need his life, that's right, And remind doctor Bell.

Not the ring, this phone nothing singing.

We got live moves right here.

Ray Parker Jr.

This quest love Supreme want to lay down right, calm down like you?

That was to nice to night.

Ray Parker Jr.

And Radio air Conditioning here on request lore.

Uh yo, this is there's some story behind that song this You should not let that just drip.

I'm I'm never We want to ask all the stories.

Every episode is a blessing, but this one in particular is like I mean, this man is the consummate musician, session player, producer, uh songwriter personality.

I mean, he's one of the coolest people alive.

You don't understand.

It's real.

Seriously, it's cool.

Ladies and gentlemen, Welcome the greatest.

Ray Parkerjr.

Thank you good to be here.

Thank you man.

This is this is a dream, a dream.

Thank you, Thank you for coming to do our show.

We are going to ask every question ever I want to ask you right now.

The kid is a nice thing.

Okay, tell me usually a start at the beginning, but tell what was the story behind tonight and night Tonight?

It's an interesting song because I don't know if you recall, but I used to play on all the Herbie Hancock and I wrote a lot of songs with Herbie So I was over his house one day and we were kicking it.

And if you know anything about Herbie, he never plays the same thing twice.

He just doesn't, you know.

And his chords changed like every half a beat, it's a different chord, and it's like going off forever.

And he ran across these three chords and I was like, WHOA, that works, but you just got to slow it down.

He's like, what are you talking about?

I said, slow that down?

He said, that ain't working on my song.

I said, I ain't talk about your song no more with that already, slow it down.

And I had to get him to play the chords in segments where it would just hold for two bars.

He says, what do you mean?

He says, what am I doing for two I says, you're not doing anything.

Just hit the sustained pedble, just hold it, let it drift.

And I ended up talking.

I said, you know, I could write a whole song off of that.

So what I did is I took his synthesizer and his mood, unplugged it from right where we were at his house, which was off of Doheny, put it in my car, put him in the.

Car in front seat.

That stuff in the back, drove him to my house in my studio, right plugged it back up, and I said, now I want you to do exactly what you're doing at your house.

I just want you to do it like him one twelfth the time.

So everything lasts two bars, and he had one hell of a time done.

We spent a long time because he just couldn't hold those cords that long.

He says, man, this is stupid.

I said, don't worry about the stupidity of it, just do it and let that hang.

And then he played the bass on it.

Then to put the bass on second.

He was playing way too many notes for it.

Slowed that down to just do do do do?

Do you know?

Which still is a lot for me.

Right, he's that's his version that slowed down.

Then we took the synthesizes back to his house and finished his song.

What was it?

I don't know.

I just remember tonight to night I was so and thrown with my song.

I forgot what we were doing for him?

Is that hard for you to do it like?

I'm often frustrated because obviously jazz cats have a bigger, wider, expansive vocabulary, yeah, than the average musician.

So to get them to just simplify, I think it's a pride thing.

Like they feel like every I think it has to be this elaborate, big product, traumatic thing, and they don't understand the beauty of simplicity.

Do you think that's because like they just think they're above pop music or.

Yeah, in a sense, they're like in more notes is more something?

You know, I've learned that the less notes you play, the more money you get a lot of money.

For the space, you know.

But you know it's like, you know, most of my friends and I start off like this too.

I used to play jazz and the old stuff when I was younger.

You want to play something that the musicians sitting next to you cannot play.

So it's that kind of a thing like watch me do this run and you can't do this run when actually, when you're making music, you want to play something that the person that everybody, even if they play it bad, they want to you make them try to play it, so they think I got it, I got it, you know.

So it's it's actually the opposite thing.

So what you feel is that resistance from people when they locked into jazz and they say I got it.

This is it.

They're locked into their world and they just can't see anything else, so they just over there.

You know.

I don't even know if they think they're better than anybody.

I don't think it's better.

I just think they think they're different and they think that the difference is correct.

I also think it's easier for jazz guys to do the more difficult composition stuff, but it's literally impossible for them to play something simple.

Yeah, so I want to go back to the beginning.

You were You're from the d right yere?

Are you from Detroit?

Yeah?

What part of Detroit?

Are you on?

The west side?

West side Grand Boulevard, Dexter, Actually Virginia Park and Dexter.

But I was born halfway between the Grandy Ballroom and Motown, really right in the middle.

I could walk either way.

If I walked northwest, I was going to the Grandy Ballroom, in which I was a kid not old enough.

To go in.

You could hear Jimmy Hendricks playing upstairs, you know, coming out the window.

And for those of y'all who don't know, the Grandy Ballroom was like a white rock club in the harder the ghetto.

Black people everywhere, and it was almost like off demilitarized zone.

They could go to from their cars to the club and back without being harmed.

If they went another block either way, that was it, you know, or half a block either way, and it was like holly sacred ground.

But it was right in the middle of the ghetto, and all of the rock bands would played, the Ted nug and the m Boy Dukes.

That's when he had a group called the m Boy Dukes, and all the rock bands were famous for playing here.

And then if I went the other way, it was Northwestern High School, which I ended up graduating from, and then there was Motown down the street, so I could walk to Motown too.

First of all, it was guitar, your first instrum no no, I played clarinet.

Six years old, I assume that was school.

That was elementary school.

I had a teacher named Alfred T.

Kirby, and he's probably the most important person in my life because at five years old, I was in kindergarten and I hated kindergarten because the gym class didn't have you dance these Russian dances with the girls where you got to change, you know, partners and all that stuff.

I wasn't into no girls, you know, that's another story.

Took me a long time to find girls.

When I found a little but you know, so I didn't want to do this.

So at the type of person I was out going at, you know, tame time for the first grade.

Now I'm six years old, I said, I ain't doing it.

I'm not gonna do it.

So I want to go talk to my parents about it.

Because they didn't really know what I was talking about.

So I decided to find out who's running this school, and so they told me the principal.

I said, well, where is the principal?

And so I marched out of class, went to the principal's office and said, look, I ain't digging the gym thing with the dancing with the girls.

Is there something else I can do?

So the principal looked at me, I'll never forget to look.

First of all, the principal said absolutely nothing.

For maybe a it seemed like sixty seconds like this, the little kid come in here talking it's cramp like you know, So it was like that more of that.

Then the principal said, okay, I got something for you and took me to the music class.

He said, if you don't want to be in this gym class doing these dances, you can take a music class.

I said, what's a music class?

Said, you pick an instrument and you go play.

Now, well, it's nice about the music class that I just this is a god given just a gift.

Is my only had two best friends in the world.

That was Nathan and Olie, and both of them were already in the music class.

Oli Brown and Nathan wantthan elem them absolutely wow Jesus yeah, so the band.

So, so I go to the class.

I walk into the room.

There's Nathan playing his trumpet.

Nathan played the trumpet.

Ollie was playing the drums, but at that time he had a snare drum and we hung a symbol from the ceiling, you know.

And uh so the teacher asked me what I want to play?

Well, I was a young kid.

I wasn't going to say the tuba, right, take tuba?

So I wanted to play the flute.

And all the girls had taken the flute, so was I said, what's the next smallest instrument?

And the next small censure was the clarinet, you know.

And so mister Kirby, who was a genius guy.

I wish I could talk to him now, mister Kirby.

Uh.

He looked at me, he says, young man.

Just about a week into it, he could see that I was less than enthuseda as Oli and Nathan were.

He says, we're going to start a band, and this band is to be called the Sting Rays, which was named after me.

I didn't figure that out for twenty years.

But the band was named after me.

And you know who else didn't figure it out?

Allie and Nathan.

They were too stupid to figure out.

Its just been radio was named after you until later.

That's a story.

So and I think he named it after me because I needed the most.

I needed more encouragement than Nathan and Olie did, you know.

And so it was interesting.

We we did parent teacher conference stuff, orphanages and a whole bunch of stuff.

And our hit song which was hitting the neighborhood, local local hit.

It's called Airplane du Do Do Do Do Do Do Doom d crash, you know, And that was it.

And man, we were we were popular.

And we select for somebody this is under ten years old, six.

Years old, can't it's we were six years old, six were rocking.

That's the show, ladies.

And yeah, I was dancing to one of your songs.

Yeah.

Yeah, So that's how it all began is on the clarinet, Nathan played the trumpet, Allie played the drums.

Any any other notable Session Monster musicians also go to the school with you during this time period that Oh yeah, when you know Diana Ross went to that school, not when I went toations went to that school, I think.

Yeah, there was a lot.

No, this was a famous now what you got a picture.

I'm sure you've noticed that a lot of famous people have come out of Detroit.

It was just a small area.

So everybody was going to either that school or the school next to it, or Cast Tech or you know.

We were all in the same genre, so to speak.

Kevin Tony went to high school with me.

He still plays with me now.

The guy from the Blackbirds Rock Creek Park doing it, Yeah, he was, and we all went to school together.

That's what we're gonna get to.

His story for sure, that's another story.

He's a jazz guy, okay, and you know, so that's the whole story.

But uh, and just to show you the progression.

Later we met up with Sylvester Rivers, who was one of our good friends too, who ended up doing all of the piano working Invictus and hot wax and the other stuff.

And Sylvester had a band.

For the first time, we thought we were smoking everybody.

I mean, we were jamming.

So now let's fast forward.

It seemed like twenty years but eight years old, eight and a half years old, we're going to fast forward to eight and a half years old.

The biggest thing to happen at eight and a half years old is we heard Sylvester's band.

And Sylvester's band had a bass guitar and he was playing a keyboard.

We never really thought about chords, right, We didn't even have a bass drum yet.

So all of a sudden, now we're hearing chords for the first time, and we're hearing the bass note on the bottom.

Man, that stuff seemed this big compared to just the trumpet, the clarinet and the snare drum.

You know, so Ollie immediately, you know, I guess his parents borrow some money.

He got a bass drum so he could get some bottom on at least the drums, so you could get a kick going, you know, foot going and our neverget Sylvester wanted Olie to join his band, which was a more phisticated band, because their drummer wasn't happening.

And Ali was on the floor crying, you know, because he didn't want to leave his.

Homies, you know, just so he's tried.

I can't.

I'll never leave.

I said, man, you need to leave.

I ain't gonna do this anyway, knowing something else.

I still wasn't committed at that age, and by that time I was playing a little bit of saxophone.

But the big thing, the big life change, was my dad bought a Magnavox tape recorder about this big, with real to reel, and I had the only tape recorder in the neighborhood that was real to real.

So you were the studio.

I was a studio, believe it.

And I still like that today.

But I was the studio.

I had the tape recorder and my brother had a cheap box guitar, and I remember I had a busher saxophone.

I took my brother's guitar and I put the microphone in the guitar and it amplified it.

Right.

It was an acoustic guitar, but I put the mic in the thing, passed the strings, stuck it up in there, turned the tape recorder up, and I was like, whoa, that's cool sound.

Plus I got more than one show.

I can't plain things that you hit the strings, but it was more than one old at the time, and I was tired of breathing and stuff.

Anyway, So Ollie left the band.

Yeah, I didn't like this.

And by the time, you know, I was starting to get a little taller, a little more ten years old, starting to get a little more handsome, you know, growing little head.

I ain't found the girls yet, but I'm just saying I was just starting going into your own.

Yeah, I'm getting taller.

You know.

In the little clarinet's getting smaller, I'm getting taller.

You know what happened.

So Ollie quit the band and went with Sylvester and the bigger band.

So I just decided I'm gonna play the guitar and you know, and we were still playing together sometimes, but they didn't want me to play the guitar.

They wanted me to play the clarinet, you know.

And I said, if you don't let me to play the guitar, I ain't gonna record y'all.

That's just the way it is, you know.

So that's how that went.

Okay, So now I'm gonna let y'all take it back over.

I know this is.

Going campfire stories, so we just tell them who Ali or he keeps?

Well.

Now, now everything's coming to me now, because I was trying to Ollie and Jerry hooked up, and of course Jerry was also in radio, so.

That oh yeah, I holked them up years later.

That's way I see it.

I don't want to jump that far.

I don't jump that far.

So okay, So were you self taught or did you have formal instruction self taught on the guitar?

And is this normal for everyone in Detroit?

Like am I to think that everyone's a wonder kind prodigy at their instrument?

You know what?

Yeah, it does seem like it.

But let me tell you this.

The level of musicianship was so high that before you could even tell anybody you played the instrument, you had to be good.

Right.

It's just like I'll never get Norm Nixon told me one time.

He said all his guys he went to school with, all six or eight of them went to the NBA because the level of practice that they all commanded from each other.

It was so much higher that when they showed up with everybody else, the whole group was higher.

And I think that's how Detroit was.

You know, when I was a young kid, like fourteen, I'm playing in at twenty Grand.

Well, you know, James Jamison was sitting next to me, right, So that's just the way you played.

James Jamison was sitting here.

You know, Jack atri over there, Robert wis sitting here.

I mean, you gotta play, well, you gotta play.

You know, there's no way around it.

And if you're not cutting it, everybody's pointing at you.

And I gotta tell the street when the notes, when the bad notes get played.

It wasn't me because I was perfect, right, I had to be perfect.

I'd be out, but they'd all point to me.

Anyway.

I get hit with the drum stick anyway, because it's the youngest.

So did you play with the Funk Brothers or were you a I didn't play with the Funk Brothers on the original.

Well no, no, I don't mean that, But did you ever play with those guys?

Oh?

Every day?

So the twenty Grand was just the epicenter of musicians.

I was in the house band at the twenty Grand, so it was like fourteen fifteen.

It was Michael Henderson would play sometime.

Bohannon was the band leader.

He's the guy that brought Melton Hamilton.

Bohannon brought me in the band.

Michael Henderson would play when he's not on tour with Miles or Stevie or somebody.

But Jamison was there just about every night.

Eddie Willis would play sometime.

Wow, I was there all the time.

Right.

Why I watch him was from the joy as well?

Yeah, you know, to get tired.

Why wat Yeah, the thick L five that he puts the phone in and get the Winwaie pedal.

Yeah, that's my guitar.

That ain't wi Wis guitar.

He still owed me three hundred dollars.

I was going at that when I was playing jazz.

I put the phone in there because Melvin Spiks and George Benson had done it, and I bought an L five, you know, to play some jazz.

I was playing jazz wy.

I was living with this white chick and she stole all everything he had.

So he.

Came home the carbet was gone.

She took all the money, he would have killed her, but he didn't have enough money to go get fired her.

To kill it took and while I had a thin body guitar that he was playing all the time, and so I said, look, I ain't gonna play jazz much no more.

You could buy my l five and he didn't have much a choice.

He gave me one hundred two hundred bucks and said he paid me the rest, which I never ever, never did.

But that's how he got that guitar.

And then once he started playing with it, the wa wai pedal and the boxy tire feeding back gave him his new sound.

He was like, oh, I like this.

So he's been playing the ever since.

Now.

We had a deal because he smokes a lot of cigarettes, and so I say, if you croak early and when my guitar back, that's prit of the deal.

That's probably the deal.

Even though so I guess uh some previous episodes before we learned the idea of the house Span, which was various acts will come to town learn the records.

Whoever you know, was how much warning did you have, Like, give us an example of you being in the house Span and someone coming to the town is this.

Okay, we're in the house span and let's say Gladys Night and the Pips come to town.

Chuck Jackson was the big guy that will come, Spinners will come.

They're in the warning you show up there this week, they say the Spinner's showing.

They put the charts up there, and it's time that you know you've rehearsed a little bit with the charts, these core charts or or actual like their cored charts with some notes.

So the guitar is going d D D D ding or duram dirrtr that'll be written.

Then you go back to chords.

Was that the same you mentioned Chuck Jackson?

Was that the same Chuck Jackson the work when Nellie.

Cole was No, no, no, there was a guy singer.

Chuck Jackson had a big horn section and everything.

I know Chuck Jacks Marvin Yanson too.

Yeah, yeah, I did some of Natalie's records.

Yeah, you're on sophisticated lady, right, I believe I know.

I'm on our love.

I remember that, okay, because she was pregnant at the time, right, Okay.

So okay, so you're saying that without warning, someone puts paper in front of you.

And you go get yeah, you gotta go.

Okay, And I got my first gig at Motown, even before Hamilton Bohanna, even before the twenty Grand is with the Spinners.

Okay, and Billy Henderson had a truck called Fascinating Rhythm.

He says, I don't care how old you.

You could read that chart, you got the gig.

So I pulled up my guitar, I read that chart, and now I got the gig.

And so he came to my mom and they take us down on weekends, you know, and we go play with the Spinners.

They were nobody at the time they had.

Felipe Win hadn't even gotten the band yet.

So this is the Detroit Spinners, Detroit Spinish.

Yeah, but at the twenty grand, which is interesting, Felipe Win got in the band at the twenty grand.

They didn't have no hits and they weren't signed to Philadelphia.

But I do remember Felipe Win turning out the audience two shows a night with no hits.

He just started doing that.

Half half yeah, I heard it, and he was just the most energetic guy you ever seen, and we nobody knew what he was singing, right it was like exciting anyway, I've heard the level of performing was unbelievable.

Yeah, sol bay Wind was off the Chaine and I heard he was like the greatest, like ad Liver.

He would just come up with stuff off the cuff.

But they said they wore tom Bell would shortened all the songs to leave a long faith because they just would let him have the fade.

So if you look at the Spinner songs, they you know, two minutes it starts to.

Just go to the fath he there's a formula one Spinner songs because when you're the same with Slim and family Stone, like I used to think that Fleebe sang everything, whereas you know, I noticed that uh, one of the other singers would sing the main lyrics and then when it was time for the end straight he rarely would get a song by him, stuff like rubber a band man or maybe one of a kind.

But it's kind of like a formula at the twenty grand, So could you describe what what a typical night there was like, Like, first of all, I was at the nightclub.

Is it it was.

A night theater or we need another nightclub like that?

It was an all black nightclub in the center of the ghetto.

Capacity probably four or five hundred people, but it would be packed.

I mean this place would be packed seats everywhere.

Gladys night would have a line going outside in the wintertime all the way around the block.

So if it's in the center of the hood, was there any concern where once you became of a certain stature, Say, if you're like Diynald Ross, right, are you still going to the twenty Grands?

Ye?

See, Norman Wifield's there every night.

I mean he used to pick on me as a kid, saying what's he doing here?

And I said, shit, you the drink?

Shut up?

Call me out routinely.

You know you're coming underage?

Like yeah, yeah, I was way under age.

I mean me and Norman Widfield we couldn't be friends for like another four years because he was called he was just calling me out just you know, it.

Took a while.

I used to check.

I don't know, he was just picking on me, and then he talked to me like third party too.

He'd be like, why is he here?

He's obviously too young.

He was just picking you know.

I was like really like initiation, Yeah, like I guess, you.

Know, he didn't know through you he might have someone that was sort of on level.

With Dennis or no, he didn't feel none of that.

He wasn't feeling.

So it was all about Dennis and no one else.

That was thet kid pumped out on the stage.

I mean, just what that was.

It wasn't headed that way.

But the typical day is, you know, we go in rehearse the songs, or like I say it, showtime, we do the first show almost like clockwork.

Every night in the middle between the two shows, me and Jamison would hang out.

James had a black fleet with bro him.

We go to his car, you know, and I was a really nice kid.

Jamison would go in his glove box and that's winter time, so we got the windows rolled up, we got a little bit of heat on co and and then he have a bag of weed.

Then the bag of weed was sitting on his gun.

You know, the gun.

I'm sorry, the gun was sitting on the bag.

First of all, everybody just by everybody in the gun got get used to that.

You don't go nowhere without your gun in the glovebox, you know.

But he had a weed undergun, so he would get the weed put in the primary starts smoking weed.

So I told my mother on James Jameson what I said, you know, because it was making me feel weird.

You know, it's you know, contact, It just wasn't happening, you know.

So you know, I had to talk with my parents and they told me what to say because they didn't want me to get I'll get him in trouble.

So I went back and I said, you know, mister Jamison, mister Jameson, how old was he at the time.

I don't know, he probably is in his late thirties.

I'm guessing, you know.

And yeah, I think I was fourteen fifteen.

I said, you know, I can't sit in the car with you no more because you know, you're smoking these things and I can't, you know, I feel weird.

Yeah.

Yeah.

He promised me he'd never do it again, you know, he said, you know, this is a week lady said, he missed our hangout in the car, you know, because nobody else is hanging out with because he liked to drink a little bit.

People gone.

So he told me he never do it again.

So I said, okay, cool, and then we got back together and we go to his car listen to some music kick it.

You know, I didn't know he's going to be famous or anything.

I just just the bass player.

What I was going to say was he I've never heard any James Jamison stories whatsoever.

For those that know, James Jamerson is like the standard for which I personally judge every bass player I ever played with.

For those of you that are fans of of d'angelo's Voodoo and you praise Pinal Palladino, Pino Palladino's basically the second coming to James Jamerson.

Like his his finger game is far none.

I mean, he's emulating James Jamerson.

In the Shadows of Bowtown documentary is a good one day Jamison everybody.

And they talked about the twenty grand as well.

So was it a generation separation?

That's what I want to know, Like it was sort of a generation separation, you know, but they were they were good guys, the Funk Brothers.

You know, my mouth was probably a little too big.

I remember the first song learned to play was I'm Losing You, and I had I had it down.

I mean, I had my Red three thirty five back picker jink Lean in the bottom note.

I had the whole thing put together.

And so I was showing Robert White.

You know, we were sitting in the studio and I'm showing Robert White sort of not just playing for him, but sort of like, look at me, watch this.

You know, I'm the man, you know.

And Robert White looked at me and says, he says, he says, that's really nice, young man.

I played on the original record.

You know, master.

I mean, you know, I'm like, really you playing on that?

I says, well, then he I found he played mocked on.

That's him on my girl.

I mean, I was like, I got quiet, you know, I got shut up.

But those guys were teaching us.

So you know, Robert White taught me a lot of rhythm stuff and and tricks and how to phrase it and how to use the thing.

So they were real helpful.

They were real good guys, all of them.

So am I just assuming that there is what I think are three classes, because obviously when Norman Woodfield really started, UH kind of taken over where Holland DOJ or Holland left off.

If Holland DOJ Holland really utilized the Funk Brothers to their full ability, I feel like Norman Woodfield took Dennis Coffee's band.

And wait wasns Coffee's band or but he just took Dennis Coffee and wah wah basically.

But the even the rhythm section was was different than he was some of the same guys sometimes.

Yeah, Jamison was on some of his stuff before they could not get along.

They had some fights, you know, right, So I mean by the time that they had made in their exodus to Hollywood, what were you facing?

Then?

That was a godsend that Holland dojoh Honald left Motown really because yeah, because Jack Ashford, Dennis Coffee, Robert White, they had Motown sold up.

I did some Marvin Gay albums when Marvin wanted to be different.

I did one thing with Smokey and the Snake Pit, but most of the sessions were done by the Funk Brothers.

So when Holland Doja Holland left, the Funk Brothers weren't supposed to be there.

So that left me and my boys, me and selvester step By, Oh yeah us one at the young Man single in Free so we hit all that.

Of course, it is, yeah, all that.

Kind of stuff.

Chairman of the board, Laura Lee Free to pay I mean, that's us doing all that those records.

So that led us in on the thing, you.

Know, job so you were the house band for it.

Yeah, I'm I'm on money.

Yeah, that's all that's me.

Yeah, so we're having a good time.

Marvin get cut a record.

I remember the first release was You're the Man, which I'm playing two or three guitars on.

That's me at fifteen sixteen, and I'll never forget I made like twenty grand in a month.

My father worked at Ford.

He only made sixteen grand all year.

So this posed a real interesting problem.

More money than fox, right, my dad?

My dad?

No.

I had already told my dad I don't need no money.

I told him that at thirteen years I got the money.

Damn good.

You don't have to pay nothing for me no more.

But what was interesting is now I'm starting to make so much money.

My dad thought for sure I was selling drugs.

He was one hundred percent sure, so he hired my older cousin to follow me around.

Now this may have been prompted by if you ever saw the movie Superfly, the blue Cadillac with all the stuff on it, Marvin Gay had one just like it, but it was burgundy with a burgundy top.

It was cold bloody bug eyes.

I mean, you know this thing was that.

So Marvin's at the studio one day and he's smoking a joint and I'd already kind of said, you know, I think Bohanna or somebody told him, you know, Ray what to join him.

So Marvin felt bad, but he wasn't gonna stop smoking his joint.

He just felt bad about it.

So I'll never forget what he did.

Man, I don't know if I had a driver's license or not at the time, but he looked over at me and says, man, Ray, why don't you take the car for spend, go out for a couple of hours to have a good time.

And I'm like, really, man, let me tell you.

Let me drive the pitmobile in Detroit.

It was leaning so hard.

I think me and the mirror were like.

Sent it up.

You know, I'm driving through the neighborhood, so I know because so I'm just trying to protect my dad.

Now, you know, he saw that too, so he at least heard about it.

He said, Man, we saw your son driving a fifty thousand dollars cap.

Now you said he made how much money last night?

You need to check your own home, talk about us.

So I'm pulling up to the high school.

I'm leaning hard, right, I can't get not no girls in the car because I can't stop, because I'm scared to stop.

I'm just leaning.

And if the police come, I don't care.

I'll take it.

I shot at it.

But I drove around for a couple hours, went back to study your best time in my life, you know.

So your father just had no clue that you were pretty much a genius at your craft at this point.

He thought that, first of all, if you weren't playing the saxophone while you playing any music, he says, nobody wants to hear anything about the saxophone.

And my father was much older than me, by the way, I should say that he had me at forty six forty seven.

So in his mind all he knew was the jazz musicians of the old days.

They live out the suitcase, they make five dollars, and they broke right.

So that's all.

He didn't understand what recording was or any of his stuff.

Okay, so what would a session musician in Detroit make on a typical session?

First of all, are you your own agent?

Yes, okay, we had no agents.

They just call you on the phone.

McKenley Jackson for Invictus would call up and say, hey, we're cutting at such and such a time.

Can you make at ten o'clock ninety dollars for three hour session?

How long do you have to learn the song?

You don't have long.

They spend half an hour on the drum sound.

You go in.

There wasn't no amplifiers.

Everybody had a little ortone speaker next to them, and in the main room at Motown, everybody plugged in the same speaker, clapping that bass guitar, everybody plugging the same thing.

Then they had a drum booth for the drums, so they you run the song down a few times.

But you gotta get three songs in three hours, or don't nobody want to see you no more.

You gotta get three songs whatever.

So you got a half an hour setting up the thing.

You got to change the string, whatever, y'all got to tune up whatever.

That's it.

Now, let's play and they come in and change the parts and they run it down and you had to get it.

But what was exciting is you could hear your song on the radio.

Within ten days.

They get it out really quick back then, you know, and it was a singles world.

Back then, it wasn't a lot of albums, so everything we cut was supposed to be a hit single.

All right.

So during this period, what is your proudest moment of like, ah, that's my guitar?

Like, what's what's your man?

When I heard everything Good is Bad and Everything Bad is Good come back?

It had four of my guitars on that overtop and I was up loud.

How many wait?

How many tracks?

Were?

Sixteen tracks?

Okay?

So what year is this now?

This is nineteen seventy, I guess sixty nine seventy.

Okay.

So the studio used is this god it sound?

Or is it no?

No?

This was Holland Doja.

Holland had their own studio and it was in a burned down movie theater on Grand River and Joy Road, which was happening to be two blocks over from the Grandy ball Room, which was interesting because I always wondered why they had a burnt down movie studio and why they put all this sand under the control room floor.

And when I first built my studio in Hollywood American studios, I didn't want to burn down movie theater.

But I did put sand under the floor, which made it work right.

And now that I'm older, I traced it back to Memphis.

The old Royal Studio was in a burned down movie theater and they got saying under the control room, and so it all really started in Memphis.

They were trying to imitate you know, Sack exactly and Willie Mitchell during the Hollandojoh Holland period and the Marvigay period.

And I was just graduating out of high school.

You know, I got out of high school at seventeen, so I'm now doing a year of college, as I say, at the first In the middle of the first year, which I hated, now, I was drafting car parts for Ford Motor Company.

I mean, if you can imagine me with a suit and town, you know, drawing car doors and trying to make it fit.

You know, that didn't work out for me, and Stevie Wonder called me on the telephone and I had never met Stevie Wonder, but Music from My Mind was my favorite album, you know, of all time, which they recorded in this building.

By the way, What effected what effected music on my mind?

Have on you like, I never heard those sounds just to hear, like, I never heard someone that was in that era describe it.

I mean, I know what it is in hindsight and as an adult.

But by the way, that's my favorite album that he's ever recorded, and it's him playing all the instruments, but it's all these experimental sounds, and it's a breakaway from the traditional motown sound.

It's just him experimenting one hundred percent free and experiment and just trying something totally new.

And so I had pretty much, you know, when I first heard it, I'm not sure I liked it that much because it was so new then as I then a month later, I had thrown away every other record.

I had just had the eight track of that in my car play along which.

One which one grabbed you the most?

On the album, like the first you know what?

I can't Marry wants to be super I can't.

I can't even say.

I just would play the whole a track and just let it play.

And I used to drive from Detroit to Cincinnati and back in eight hours just so I could just nobody could talk to me.

I just turned up loud and just drive and just listen to it was that, you know.

So what happened to me is right around my birthday in seventy two, right before my eighteenth birthday, I got a phone call from Stevie Wonder.

And this is a true Strive told before I hung up on him, you know, because.

I that's a common thing before ever.

Yeah, no one not believing.

I mean, I'm playing the song the album in my car every day.

I ain't got nothing but that, So it's got to be one of my boys messing around with me, got it, but you know, And he called two or three times.

I hung up two or three times.

Four times he called back.

I said some not some nice things, and then still hunt good thing.

He had a sense of humor, so he called back and fifth times says, look, he says, we ain't we ain't communicating this, Steve Wonder, he says, listening to this.

And he played me the rhythm track he had just started with Superstition, and I almost hung up again because the rhythm track, the Superstition starts off with marching drums, and I was like, oh, that's bulls, you know.

Then before I could hang up, I heard thought I heard that, and I went, oh, my god, I'm hanging up the phone, and there was still this shoe of the college with the door parts and learning that thing, you know, And there's major problem there because my dad wanted me to finish college and get a real job and have a pension plan.

This still wasn't a real jobs.

Dollars No twenty in one month right now.

I remember, I'm doing the twenty grand, making three fifty a week at the twenty grand and cash no taxes.

We didn't pay taxes in Detroit three fifty weeks.

He's right here, lazy.

Let's shoot ten years ago to mayridaon and paid tax don't go back to hip hop.

Make so we make three fifty, So three fifty a week at twenty grand, ninety dollars every three hour session at Hollands in Holland, and then that one month with Marvin Gay and Jewish bar misisfais and weddings on the weekends pay like thirty five forty bucks and we could do three, four to five of those easy.

So we're making money in Detroit.

Want your dad a house for some of this money?

Likes pretty much?

Yeah, But instead I bought myself a really nice con.

It's crazy.

In the first house I bought, I bought my dad house.

I did do that, so just so you'll know, when I made some real money, I bought my dad house.

Mom took care of everybody, paid all the bills.

They never paid a pen anymore for the rest of their life.

And he still didn't he didn't say you should still finish college.

By that time I was twenty two, he was done talking.

Okay, parent gave all that parents do that like just siding deep deep into Hiladelph half life.

My dad was still getting it.

You gotta get a real job exactly like it's my third record.

He's like, you gotta get a real job, your son and I love you.

Gotta come on straighten up.

Yeah I got that.

I didn't get it.

It didn't get real to my mom until she saw me on the cover of Double XL, Like when she like when she saw us on double x L and then like the sowreds like see me in magazines.

That was when somebody your second album.

It was like it was like, okay, it's it's real.

So with Stevie, did you.

You finally moved?

When did you move to Los Angeles?

I moved to Los Angeles soon as I quit Stevie's band, and I stayed in the band a good eight months.

I guess something like that.

You know, I always wanted to go to l A.

I just I felt like, you know, even in Detroit it's good.

It was always felt like the stork made a mistake and like dropped me in the wrong neighbor.

It just felt like that for some reason.

You know, Like I saw the Beverly Hills Billies on TV and I was like, wow, that's I like that restaurant rod, you know, swimming pools, movie stars in the sunlight, and you know, I remember seeing Leave It to Beaver.

Nobody ever stole Beaver's bike and he rode it to school.

You know, I was getting nice for my jacket.

I'm getting knife stuff for my jacket, and everybody got guns and we're going to pick each other up in the alley and go to school and the group and all that kind of stuff.

Beaver didn't have to do none of that stuff, you know, So I just I didn't know the difference.

I just would ask my parents where's that at, and they'd all stay California.

I mean, everything was movies were done in Califoria.

I just thought, well, they don't rob you in California, so I mean it should be cool.

Yeah, they sure do.

And I learned that when I got there too.

They steal your money and it takes your year or two to figure out that you lost, like what happened.

So when you're touring with Stevie, I mean you're with the heavy I mean again, in hindsight, I don't think you saw it as man, these are the heavyweights.

But I mean it's like, you.

Know Williams, Denise Williams, and was Raymond Pounds with you or was like he wasn't was somebody before Ali?

I got Ali in the band.

After Stevie and the drummer things name is Chris, they had a fight and the drummer said, blind for me, I'm gonna kick Steve.

How about this, Stevie want is used to being blind.

The drummer thought he could put a thing around his eye and make it even, and so he went for blows and Stevie every time he wait a minute, they he fist fought.

They got into a.

Fist exclusive.

So I didn't think that was even in let.

But they ended up and of course, you know Stevie.

Every time the guy even turned his head, Bawn Stevie was.

Left.

It was it was baby.

Was like bang and so we all had accepted to the darkness.

Wait a minute.

It didn't take long before we had to stop the fight.

And then this guy still got fired, so he lost this game.

That's what they got in the band.

But we did have Randy Brecker, David Sanborn, Denise Williams, you know.

So it was it was a lot of people in this band, Heavywey, Scotti, Edwards, you know.

It was a great band.

So were you part of the infamous uh Rolling Stones tour?

Absolutely his first tour.

I've been on the big tour, coy, why not?

Just was the reception like the reception, yes, no, no, no, Well this is the thing.

So we we interviewed the Revolution, uh some episodes back and of course, and I've heard mixed side of the story as well, and he was like, well, you know, he's on stage in his underwear, so of course they're going to throw stuff at him.

The Revolution was basically saying that, you know, Rolling Stones audience wasn't receiving them well, and they got booed and pelted with Jack Daniel bottom.

I was there when when Prince got hit with the jack.

Daniels got hit in the head with the bottle.

He got that head somewhere in l A.

He got hit in the head with the jack.

I had to get off the stage.

He got hit in the head.

They said play them and roll.

I mean it was like bad, you know.

I mean he came out the gates smoking with the guitar.

Solo was still.

And there's theories behind that.

But like with you, was there fear like we might not.

First of all, I was too young to know anything.

I thought that Rolling Stones had already come on.

I thought Stevie was the headlined okay, So it took me a minute or two.

By the time the tear gas got in the limousine, I figured out, okay, something else is happening here, and the.

Whole thing, you know.

So the whole thing, now, you gotta remember, this was I haven't really discovered girls yet, but I was about to discover lots of girls.

So this is the first really big tour, like go away from home and state for more than a week that I'd ever been on.

Was the Rolling Stones tour in nineteen seventy two, and they were wonderful guys.

We all had a great time.

No one bowed Stevie Wonder off the stage, that told him to get off.

We didn't have that same experience as some of the other groups had, you know, maybe because he got the respect.

And then we'd always go play a few songs with the Stones, and you know, we got to go to Playboy Mansion, which I had never been before.

Eighteen eighteen.

Yeah, there's a documentary of it called the You ever see the Cocksucker's Blues?

The Rolling Stones documentary?

Yeah, they show I guess you guys playing satisfaction with.

Yeah, the little skinny kid with a rig good time.

He really skinny baffro that be me?

So were you ever like on their airplane?

And that's supposed to be the penultimate standard of just rock excess?

Yeah, yeah, that's supposed to be the beginning.

It was pretty bad.

There was a lot of going on.

There was a lot of things.

Because if you don't like to smell of weed like.

That, you know, I didn't do that.

I didn't partake in that type activity.

Let you do it, and I do remember that, you know, last I had checked cocaine was white.

Their cocaine was crystal clear, and it was clear and it went up in a cone like that high and people could just go back and just get all they want.

So this was only for eight months.

The Roalinstones tours for about four months, but I mean your college tour with Stevie after that.

So this is also I mean his morphing into something other than little Stevie Wonder or just a big time Yeah.

Yeah, he had changed and he became a he's an interesting guy, but he really was.

We used to hang out all the time, like we raced cars, you know, and we crashed.

Drive.

Oh if you didn't let him drive your fifty dollars fine?

Wait what yeah?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, this is like this episode is gonna fuel all the STEVIEE ain't blind.

Con don't believe the STEVIEE is blind.

It's not gonna If you're.

Sitting next to STEVEE, you know he's blind and he's driving the car.

Now he insists on driving.

Because he insisted when you being in the passenger instructions.

Yeah, and what's worse than that is he insisted on me driving and then we'd have to race the car next to us, and he didn't care about hitting the car.

He said, we'll hit him.

Then I was about to say he's been and he's been in car accidents and he still drives.

Let me tell you something.

He hadn't been in the car incident yet.

This was I still got some reservations about what happened.

I'm gonna leave that alone because I wasn't there.

Now that was a couple of years later.

I wasn't there.

But you know how you hear something on the radio like all that car dashus, You're like, well, what really happened?

What happened?

How does a limousine crash into a log thing?

And?

Oh boy, so I mean you just you know, come.

On on the cost.

Show you getting the side now that we're in the seventies.

Was Barry White next?

When first I left, See, I left Stevie's band because he was teaching me how to write songs.

I had Buddy Miles playing the guitar upside down on some of my songs, and me and Stevie cut a bunch of stuff with us singing.

But somehow he wasn't gonna release it.

I figured it took me a minute, but I figured out he really wasn't gonna let me put it out, and so that sort of broke my heart because he didn't want me to lead a band, you know, so I wanted to lead a band again.

Ray Parker Junior, man, you're too valuable.

Well, at the time I was his guitar player.

You know, he wasn't feeling it, you know, was supposed to be his boy.

So he took it kind of personal that I left the band.

But we were still really good friends because after that, I got Nathan in the band, which is our story into itself.

Let's talk about it.

Still in the band, right, Yeah, what's interest.

Nathan's the band leader.

He's been there forty three years.

But the great Nathan Wats by the way, yes, master bass player.

I had got this is a year and a half after I left the band.

Me and Stevie would still drive around LA and we parted in hangout and I got Reggie McBride in the band because me and Reggie used to play together at twelve years old.

Wow, the time this got tom Gary used to play at twenty grand in the other room.

And so Reggie left the band and went to Rare Earth.

And then Stevie said, well, I want somebody else from Detroit in the same neighborhood.

He wants that type of human being, that type of vibe.

The only person left was Nathan, who played the trumpet, right, And I said, well, I got my buddy Nathan who plays the trumpet.

He wants to play the bass.

Head.

I said, he can't play the bass yet.

You just started, you know, And Stevie said, we have him come out there.

He says, he you a fast learner.

I said, well, he's a fast learner, but he he ain't got the bass yet, right, So he had some kind of cheap harmony bass, and I remember Stevie heard him at audition Saivent sounds really weird, you know.

So then Nathan took my bass and went on this stevee on my base.

And the way the story goes, Nathan told me he's eighteen other bass players there and everybody could outplay him ten to one, but he still got the gig.

You know, what do you think?

So he learned how to because Stevie just wants somebody from Detroit in the club down the street from me, the whole bit, and so he basically taught Nathan how to play, but not how to play the bass.

It's his first gig, his first gig.

Ever in life.

So how does he because he can't see.

Is it a lot of or can he cannot see?

So how are you guys learning?

First of all, how is he writing these songs?

I've heard he writes him in his head and he just play.

He remembers every part, every everything, and he could play all part like I was in the studio with him one hundred percent the whole time when he did Living for the City, and he started with the Fender Rose no click track, with no click tracks at those times, so he just played it like this and it really got weird when it done.

And then you know, those chords going off beasts, you know.

I was like, oh, homeboys, you know, might be smoking.

But I mean, you know, then he would layer it and then we'll come together.

Put the drums on last.

Always put the drums on last.

Really, yeah, you always put your drums on last, usually the drums and drums.

But that's interesting.

Yeah, see me, I put a couple of parts down, but I need to put the drums down then locked, relock the base and everything back to whatever it is.

But he just puts down putsing drums on last.

I always wanted to know how does he not tape ideas, especially when he can't.

Well, I'm sure that he writes, but I mean for you guys to know what he's thinking.

He hears it in his head and he'll give it to you, but mostly on his records.

That's him playing most of the stuff a lot of the time.

Then he'll overdub what he needs.

So you're only getting the finished product.

Then.

Yeah, yeah, he plays the drums and stuff.

Like when we did Maybe a Baby, the track was pretty much done okay, and more trivia.

It's funny the second engineer we did that crystal sound in La turns out years later second engineer with Steve Perry from Journey Second.

Yeah, he was the second engineer on the date.

That's crazy.

Wow.

So you know old Sherry thing.

There's a lot of.

Stuff going on at that time.

You know, it's an interesting time period in life, you know.

I mean, I look back on it as a whole bunch of gread, but at the time, just what was happening that was it?

Well?

I wanted to ask about that.

When you did Barry White, was it just studio sessions or was it also touring with him.

Yeah, I did both.

Okay, how did y'all get paid?

Because Money had like seventy people on the band like every show.

I don't know about the other guys, but I was getting triple scale playing with Barry White in the studio.

But it was I came a little late, like I missed a dude, because I was playing with Stevie one tour and I met Barry White the next year, the following year, and he was my first, my last one, everything even before that.

But he was like a rough neck kind of guy.

I was going to gangster from the hood and you know, and I was a Detroit boy.

I wasn't you know that clean, you know.

So I had my afro, had my Lincoln content and gene Page famous ring.

He needs we need to get him an award on he needs a pro here.

Yeah, he's unbelievable, all Lionel Richard.

He even did the the Righteous Brothers song.

Yeah, so he's a he's He was a good friend of mine from Detroit.

I mean he lived out here, but I worked with him in Detroit and he brought me to the session.

You know, Barry Waite wasn't paying me no attention.

I wasn't on the session.

And Barry White like to play his music back loud, neve console speakers all the way up.

You know, stuff's whacking orkster jam and that stuff is going.

And I had an idea for a tune, and you know, what did I have to lose?

I was off coming from the truck.

What do I care?

You know?

So I push stop on the tape recorder, you know, and all the music stop, you know, and he got rid of yourself.

I did it?

Oh lord, Barry session?

And Barry White looked over, he says, he says, oh, yeah, it was nightment big.

First of all, he says, what Frank, what happened?

And then he looked around there to me in the corner.

I said, excuse me, mister White, and it was got real quiet, and and he said he looked at somebody.

He says, who?

Then is that right?

And then he looked at Gene Page, like you brought him here?

And I said, excuse me, mister White, and that's a really nice song, but it's missing this guitar part.

And he looked at me and before he could punch me or kick me out, he said, well, didn't get the funk in there and play it, you know.

So I went in.

Joe Jackson jack with you ask first, and I'm gonna start an empire.

So the tensions rise, original tensions rise, right.

So I go out there and uh, you know, I'm starting to play the part, and I think, like anybody else, you know, I hope he likes it, because I like, I know what I gotta do.

So I hit this line.

The line was dude, dude new that kind of thing, you know, And he loved it, and and so I said, okay, we'll roll the tape back.

He says, fuck you keep playing it now.

So the only thing that's missing on the record is fuck you keep playing now.

But you hear me out for a bar, and I have two bars, right, and then he's liked keep playing.

So I just started back up playing it.

And he just left it like that because he didn't believe in fixing it.

He just left it really yeah.

On the record, it drops out for bar half way.

He told me.

The son is White Gold album, they mean Berry White.

I'm not gonna say we were boys, but I thought we were boys, right, And you know, so his thing was he got all these riders down he said, nobody gets a song on bar White.

No way, know how y'all right for these guys, right, for these guys, right for all that time, And so mine was determined to get a song on Berry White.

So I got Gene Page to write out the charts, and I had the music demo tape cutting all the stuff.

So I put Barry while I had a little Mercedes convertible by this time.

This is later in seventy four, and Barry came out the street.

I said, Barry, listen to this, and I pushed him in my car on by accident.

I had the door open, you know, push him in, but I didn't know he's gonna cut himself, so damn the window.

Because he was too big to get in.

The Mercedes comes too big, you know.

But he got in there, but he didn't want to acknowledge that he was too big to get in, so that worked in my favorite But anyway, I got to play on the track, you know.

He said, yeah, right, that's nice.

So what about it?

I said, well, you need to cut the track.

He said, he said, man, we do it.

So we went back cut the rest of his stuff, you know, Da da Da and Barry White had a specific and he says, everybody's getting triple scale.

I'm cutting eight songs today.

I ain't paying y'all pen anymore.

You can cut it in one hour, you can cut it in ten hours.

I don't care what you do.

But once we get these songs, sessions over.

So this is one of those days.

We were done already, right, we got like two or three hours left.

Everybody want to go home, but they all my boys, David T.

Walker, you know, Lee Ridding, Jay Graydon, Dean Parks.

And Mary over in the corner.

And to show you what kind of guy Jean Page was, I owe him way too much.

He had already the night before written all the charts out for me for the whole band.

Right, And so when we got done, I said, Barry Man, you remember a song.

Please let me cut the song.

Man.

He says, Ray, we're done here, man going home.

I said, why don't you do this?

Why don't you go home?

And I cut the track.

He looked at me like that little snotty nosed kid.

I mean, he's really pushing hisself, you know.

And so he went home and I got Joe Sample and Wildon Felder, all the guys.

You know, stay there to stay back with me and cut the track.

So we cut the track in like twenty minutes, and I drove it up to Barry's house and he listened to what he says that's on the album.

Wow, that's how I got to cut on the White Gold album, which did really well.

Wait, what's the title of the song Always thinking of You?

All right, let's go into always thinking of You?

Written by Ray Parker Jr.

For Barry White, White Gold, to Love and Limited Work, Sports Left Supreme Candor.

That's Amazian reasons.

Why why not always?

Always?

Flanker?

Bill Hm who engineered this?

Who?

Frank Keshmar?

Frank Keshmar?

Who else was on the sessions?

Well?

On the Barry White sessions was Ed Green played the drums all right, all the time.

Wilton Felder, who was a saxophone player for the jacks SAIDs played the bass, and for those who don't know, he also played on all the Jackson five hits too, and a whole bunch of other stuff.

So when you hear ABC, that's Wilton Felder the sax player playing the bass.

Really yeah, okay.

Joe Sample played the keyboards.

Gary Filman played the vibes, had the vibes and on guitar would would be myself.

Wah wah, David T.

Walker right, Dean Parks sometimes either Jay graydon or Lee written now time out Dean Parks.

Yeah, the great theme Parks was my boy, Dean Parks.

We played together many years on whole bunch of stuff.

Yeah, what is Dean Parks doing in the Barry White session?

It was on all the rare White sessions.

No, just that's just I can't imagine Parks.

Just when you the song you mentioned du Yeah, that's that's Jane Parks.

I'm playing on there too, But but that's I think that's me, Dean and Lee and but we're playing one note to piece, but they're all sunk together because Barry wouldn't let you play the whole part.

So we're playing one note to d and we're sliding it up and that's all three of us.

That's overdubbing.

No, he didn't like to overdub.

So it's just normal to have four guitarists playing five.

Four.

Don't stop it for He just didn't want to overdub for monetary reasons.

No, he just didn't like it.

He mixed on the need console where all the faders are here in the monitor section here.

Yeah, and he just he believed that he should to mix up here and if he didn't hear the echo on the drums, take the whole takeover.

So he wanted everything to sound like a record right here.

He says, forget all that, do it later.

I want If I can't get it here, I ain't got no record, So it's up to the band, the engineered everybody else to give him his record on those fades.

And all he wanted to do is play with the volumes on those fades.

But if he couldn't get the snare, he couldn't get it cut over.

So even mixing like, there's no like, okay, let's take a day out to mix and stuff.

You already mixed it.

It's already over there, so you're hearing it the way he wants to hear it.

What happened afterwards?

By this time I would have figured you guys had figured out my ego.

Of course I want more.

I want a song that Barry White sings and me and him do together.

I went through something very similar at my apartment where I lived upstairs.

Barry White's one of his manager.

Guys lived there, so I figured out from the manager when Barry was just going to show up right, and I was going to pull the car real fast and play him this new cut ahead right.

I know most people said you should quit while feeling.

So here it comes.

I see Barry White pulling up.

I can't wait now I know where he's going.

But I don't want him to get out of his car and go ring the buzz and go upstairs.

I want to catch him while he's downstairs.

So I see him come up the street because I've been waiting all this time.

So as soon as I see him come to the street, I leave my parate, go downstairs, get in the car, and I pulled to the front.

But when I pulled to the front out of the parking lot, it opens the gate.

Barry White had parked his White Mark seven and the front of the gate illegally, but it was too close and I had already triggered it.

When I saw it was too late, it lifted.

The gate was rising.

He had parked and was getting out.

The gate lifted up the front of his car.

The car was too heavy car went back on the gate.

It ripped the gate off the thing and it fell on top of his Mark selling.

So I wrecked his Mark seven.

Wow.

But I did get to play him the song.

I saw that Reid it Miller, He says.

Thanks three.

I needed that, but it was his fault, he parking wrong space.

But anyway, I did get him to listen to the song, and he did cut the song.

And so I was one of the first people to ever get a song that I wrote with Barry White, maybe the only, and it's called you See the Trouble with Me, And we sold like seven or eight million records.

And then a group called Black Legend redid it in two thousand and two or something and it went number one around the world again, so it's on all his greatest hits records.

And I think he was just very kind to me to do it.

First of all, he did was kind enough not to beat me up after I trashed his White Mark seven.

You know.

So he's a good dude.

That's crazy, so okay, So eventually you quit while you're head, But we skipped Rufus and Shaka, How did you get tell Me something good?

That's Stevie's song.

He was Let's go, let's get some more drama now because you guys, I know you guys liked Okay, So I wrote the song for Barry White and Stevie.

None of them will cut it.

So next door to me is this girl Shaka Khan and Andre Fisher who I'm working with, And so me and Andre Fisher and David Foster doing sessions for thirty five bucks for Flat Top and Cookie at Ion Tina Turn Studio.

That's how it's just starting out in seventy four.

We're doing budget day, you know, we trying to make some money.

David Foster, Yeah, well he won't then.

He was like sixteen, No, she was, he was.

He's older than me.

He's about twenty three, twenty four.

But I don't know if you know he wrote that song don't Cry, She's a lady sweet trying.

Yeah.

Watch that's how you got my respect you.

David Foster wrote that.

I was like, man, we used to play that when I was a kid in the band.

Were talking about you wrote that, David Foster.

Yeah, he wrote don't Crash.

He's lated.

Everybody used to play in their band, all the rest of stuff.

Yeah, And so it was one of those things where nobody would cut the song so me and Andre we go in the studio and we lay it down.

I played the guitars and the rest up.

He says, his band of Roof is gonna cut.

I'm like, unknown, whatever cutting my unknown band?

So we cut the songs and sings on it and she's sing's really really I'm like, who's that singing?

Is?

This is gonna be something.

I'm thinking, Oh man, it's gonna be hot.

And then she tells me the story.

She says, you don't even remember me.

Huh, I said, what are you talking about?

I remembered you.

She says, well, you know when you back last year when you were playing with Stevie Wonder, me and my sister I gave you the tape to listen to.

You gave me an address to your house to mail it to in San Francisco, she says, And you don't even live in San Francisco, and you were trying to bang me and you would you.

So by then you discover women.

And I was like, guilty, yil tea, yell tea.

But you know, I said, you really sang it.

But she was pregnant with the time.

To make a long story short, the record was gonna be the first single called You Got the Love.

I mean we were jamming and her sister be in Ta taka boom, Yeah, yeah, yeah, Okay, so here comes Sha Khan.

She sang the heck out the song.

I'm liking the song, but nobody knows who know rufus Is.

They're invisible band.

Nobody ever heard of it.

Now, I just quit Stevie's band.

So you know, Stevie's gotta teach me a lesson, right, I mean, because he's upset.

Now I'm gonna ask you this question.

How in the world does Stevie Wonder, who just won eight Grammys find if he's going to cut a song, why does he cut it on the most unknown singer on the planet because he.

Found out that you were.

I'm not saying that, I'm just saying, well, I'm just fine.

I'm just telling you that, out of all the records on the planet Earth, somehow he ended up with a single in front of mine.

Y'all must have had this conversation you got to.

Love first, yes, and then where he got to Stevie.

I'm just saying, out all the records in the world, he can have his choice of doing anybody on the planet hey, somehow he migrated all the way to mine, which was wonderful because tell me something good, open up.

The album made it, and then my single came out and blew up.

And did y'all ever have a conversation you Stevie?

Well, whenever we have those conversations, it's like the Queen of England.

You know.

Did you see the movie?

No?

Okay, well I didn't see it either.

I mean, it was an amicable parting.

I assume it wasn't so bitter to the fact that, you know.

We love each other, but we've had some interesting, you're not going to speak to each other for a long time sessions.

Then he apologized, then we hugged and kiss it, and then you know, then I was nominated for an Oscar with him.

He wouldn't speak to me again until until he won, kissed me and we were good again.

You know what we nominated for with the Oscar because he was woman yeah and woman in red yeah.

I just called.

So I won the British Oscar and the fifty seven Oscars opened up with me performing what they spent like a half a minute, but they didn't ask him to perform, and I sat they sat me in back of him.

I mean, I had my hands on Ned Prince was over here, had my hands on Stevie here, and you know, I mean he wasn't saying anything.

Yeah, I had a funny suspicion that if I had won that Oscar, I think that would have been the end of the relationship.

I think that was forgiving.

Well, I think we'd be done, be done by this point.

Do you have like personal aspirations of you're own the BV artists or you're just no, Like, what do you want to be?

Do you want to be the consummate sidemen?

Do you just want to songwrite and publishing is that where it is?

Or do you want to be the star?

Well, first I wanted to be the guitar player.

Then I figured I might not make enough money doing that.

And I really like nice things, so I thought, wow, And when I work with Stevie, I liked the songwriting and all that kind of thing.

I said, why you write the song?

That works us to write the songs.

But it really wasn't until I took that Shaka Khan record home in the Very White, White Gold album to my mom and dad because they thought I was failing in California.

I should move back home.

You know.

I lost my Lincolcondmal for this little small Mercedes that didn't have electric seats and stuff, you know.

Barry then put it.

They came out to my house, which I thought was cool.

But my house was on top of a hill, swimming pool view of the city, and my dad looked at it said he couldn't afford the house on the bottom.

With everybody else, they stuck their way up in the middle of nowhere.

We had to go down this windy road and his house wasn't even made out of bricks.

He's had some stuck old you know, bluod built house they put together.

So they were really they were depressed, and they thought I wasn't doing so well.

Then I brought the record home to my mom, and it was really my mom that gave me the rude awakening.

You know.

My mom said, uh, you know, I said, hey, Mom, I got this big hit on Shaka Con I mean on Rufous.

You know.

She was what's a Rufous?

I said, that's the name of the band.

I guess she thought it was my band.

I don't know what she thought, but so I gave my mom the record, and she took the record and she looked at it, look at the front, she saw people.

She said, I don't see you right now.

You gotta understand, I'm going home with an ego I like making I'm Hollywood.

I thought the Bear song, ary white song.

You know.

She says, I don't see you.

Then she took the very white wricks.

She looked at it.

I don't see you.

I said, that's because ma I wrote the song.

Now I'm still feeling high and mighty and justified.

So she pulled out the record and I'll never forget ABC Dunhill at the time had a black label and they write, your name is silver and I said, see.

Mom says right there, Ray Parkage, you know me.

And she looked at it.

Now, my mother's in her late sixty a time, and she was like, boy, go get my magnifying glass.

I know she wasn't.

So she gets her magnifying glass and she holds it back and she's doing like that and it says our period Parker, and I'll never forget these words.

This is where I got it.

You know.

Sometimes simplicity, like you said, simplicity of a song, simplicit simplicity is better.

She said to me, She says, is that you are Period Parker.

I said, yeah, that's me, mister.

She said the Period took one space.

Couldn't they just give you another space?

And uh, you know, so when I left home with a lot smaller head than when I got there, you know, I figured, I said, you know, I'm not coming back till I get a record.

I gotta get my face on the record.

That's just it.

My mama does not understand what it is I'm doing.

I couldn't even explain to my mom what I did, and my mom couldn't even see me.

My name was so small.

I didn't like the way it felt.

By this point, you were also on the silver screen correct a little bit and Saturday Night.

Yeah that's too brief.

Well, I mean it was still like, you know, yeah, that's too brief, mama blink.

Yeah.

Did you explain to your mama that the little name on the back of the album makes a lot of time more money than the big face on.

The cover, You know what.

I could have explained it, but money wasn't the issue.

The issue is my mam was sitting there like she didn't even know what I was doing.

She's sitting there like you know, I'm coming home tomorrow.

I got it.

I want, I want you like what you know?

It's like what I don't see nothing, you know?

So that that struck a quarter message.

I'm going to cut.

I gotta cut something that my mama can see me on the cover.

That's just the way it's got to be.

You know, this is a question Love Supreme wor and Pandora.

If you're just joining us, we're almost through hour two of our conversation with our guest, Ray Parker Jr.

We learned about his work with Stevie Wonder, Barry White, Chaka Khan, and we're digging deeper and to his attempts after years of working in the music business to prove to his parents that he was a success.

I guess my question is who did you fish for to get a record deal?

I want nobody.

Okay, well, okay, this is what I want to know.

I want you to describe Clive Davis.

Now, we got to lead in the class.

Okay, gotta let me lead in the client days and I'm going to try and make it as brief as possible as long as Okay, after that, you got to love very white all that kind of segment.

I got a singles deal with A and M Records to do this girl Anita Sherman, which she sang one song and the secretary at the studio said a few words to me.

She burst out in tears.

I had four hours of studio time left, and I had to sing the song myself because she was crying.

She blew my entire record deal.

And when I went to the A and M lot, at the corner of my eye looked like in the next building over there was Quincy Jones standing there, and I was like.

Quincy Jones.

Oh my godness, Quincy Jones standing over there.

I mean Quincy Jones.

I didn't know what to do with myself because we played Killer Joe in the band when I was a kid with Bohannan and all the stuff.

So I gotta I gotta go meet Quincy.

I gotta go say something to Quincy Jones.

So I just got this record on A and M.

My egos.

I had plenty of ego at the time, maybe a bit much.

So I went over to Quincy Jones and I said, Hi, you don't know me, but I'm the guy who's gonna teach you how to produce hit records.

I'm the guy who's gonna teach you how to produce hit records.

Well, to make a long story short, a couple of months later, the Brothers Johnson came out.

He was number one on the pop charts and IRV charts, and they had sent me to Bernie Grummings, which happened to be in the back of the an M lot to get the box of records, the only ones in existence besides the radio and the swamp radio in Florida that played my record.

And as I was being escorted off the lot, the one thing that that was good for when I said that's Quincy Jones saw me like this with my records going off to the lot.

And now, by the way, by the time I got to Bernie Grumman's thing, and they had already told me I was fired.

Okay, so I'm doing a really good job at this.

I'm trying to get to Bernie Grummans, get the records and get to my car, and my Adams Apples all choked up.

I mean, I'm about to cry.

I mean, I'm holding all this in, but my Adam Appers is hurting right here, choked up.

So much, you know, a little kid.

So I mean, so I'm just trying all I want to do to get my records and make it.

And I was almost to the gate where they let you in and out, and I was getting ready because my cars parked out, so I can't get on a lot no more.

So I was about to leave, and then somebody said, hey, young man, I'm waiting on my production lessons.

Hey, all I can say is I look like Linus with the towel.

And he felt so bad he immediately stopped whoever he may have been talking to her about before, but he left.

Those guys immediately came over to me, put his arms around me and says, now, now, son, I didn't mean that.

He said, it ain't that bad.

And he says, he says, I don't know who you are.

He was just joking with me because he had a hit and me getting kicked off late.

But he did not take it that bad.

He says, I don't know who you are, but you know you're obviously doing something right, or else you wouldn't be on this lot.

That's what he said.

And he says, what you need to do now is just pick yourself back up and get back in the game and do it fast.

He says, don't take all day.

He says, get back in it and do it quickly.

You know.

And then I left that lot, went to HB.

Barnham and Wildwa at the studio where they gave me another ragging on and made me cry again.

You know.

So it's a bad day for it.

So at the time, was herb Albert and Jerry Marsh were they name only executives in those days they were running it.

So what do you think it was like?

They just didn't see I didn't have a hit.

Yeah, I was get off the lot, you don't have a hit, Get out here, get fired.

Hey, And the guy A and M told me, he said, mister Parker.

And I only sang because the girls started crying.

She messed up my record deal.

I'm like everybody else, I'm blaming on somebody else.

It wasn't me.

But she didn't sing the song.

She started crying when the other girl was hitting on me, you know.

And I was like, oh no, no, she didn't even sing anything.

Come on, you know, in those days you only had X amount of hours for studio time.

They let you in the studio for six hours, six hours you've done.

So I had to sing the song and the guy looked at me.

Kipt Comb was his name.

I'll never forget his name.

He says, mister Parker, you do a lot of things, right, guitar.

We like what you write, they said, he said, but you got to let this singing thing go.

This.

You ain't gonna be no star.

This, ain't you.

He says, that ain't gonna happen.

You know.

He says, that ain't gonna happen, and the famous last words.

So now we're going to get we're leading into Clive and all that stuff.

So hold on, here we go.

No, that's between it.

That's what leads me to climb.

So then I'm working with Richard Perry all the time, doing a bunch of sessions.

He's paying me triple scale.

He's got a studio at the Paramount Lot with Paramount Universal Lot, and so he had my name on the concrete, says Ray Parker Junior.

Whereever I I pull on Paaramount Lot park right there in the Rape Parker Junior space.

We were boys.

Man, we're cutting Barbara Streis saying, Karl Simon Lil say, I mean everybody whatever.

He did, I was.

I was just got.

He had Dave the juice man come every day.

They bring him cocaine and weed, and they bring me watermelon juice.

You know what I mean.

Just I was like, eventually he's juice, right, like watermelon juice for Rekular.

And so in those days, we didn't have like tape recorders and stuff like you have now with your iPhone.

So I had a song that I'd written at home with the little click drum machine, and I'm beating on the thing on my Maestro rhythmace and I just wanted to see what it sounds like.

So I told y Green, you play this, John Barnes, you play this.

And so we all played our parts and then Richard comes in to lunch break and says, man, that's jamming.

What is that?

I said, well, that's the song.

I wrote it home, you know.

But we're just on lunch break.

He says, well, can we cut that on leos heir And I said, well, I don't know.

Yeah, he says, but but I mean I got to get my party song.

So he promises me my part of the song.

It's not like it's a mystery issue.

I didn't know that I wasn't get my part of the song til the record came out.

So the record comes out, it's jamming, and I don't see my name on anywhere.

I stand in Tower Records for two hours trying to find my name on a forty five.

If you can imagine that.

I just knew it was going to appear.

But I'm there for two hours and the lady there was a security guard comes down to me who ended up being burned at the meeting in the lady's room.

Girl, you know climax.

Yeah, Bernie at Cooper was the security guy.

Because I'm not in the move, she was a security guard.

She's about to rest me.

She said, you're gonna buy this record or what?

You know?

I'm telling her, I'm about to start crying again.

There was a lot of crying for a big dude, So I'm about to start crying again.

She said, you know, buy this record.

What?

Then she finds, are you rape Parker?

What you're doing?

She knew me from being a guitar player.

She says, well, you got to listen to my music.

I'm like, I'm not listening to anything right now.

I'm trying to figure out what happened to my song, you know.

And so I had given him two songs.

I given him that one and Jack and Jail right.

And so Carol Childs, who is his head of his publishing company, felt so bad because she kept saying with Rickard, that's a mistake.

Richard's gonna make it right.

And Richard also told me that he's gonna do a whole album on you.

I like, you know, I like that, feed them, feed them, feed him, just postpone, postpone promise from the world.

He says, you're gonna be Barbra Streis.

He's gonna cut a whole album on you, and I'll be by Richard Pierre and you'll be on Warner Brothers.

And that's be the end of that, Okay.

Well, then the contract came.

It was like everything for him, nothing for me, you know.

And I was broken hearted because I'm.

Like, how could you do this?

I thought we've been working together on records.

I've been helping you out give him more ideas than maybe I should.

And he promised me a piece of the song.

Wasn't like he had to give me all the song, just give me my share of the song.

So he didn't do that, and Carol felt so bad.

Carol chiunds is.

Her name at the time was Carol Pinkins.

She felt so bad about it that she took the song to Roger Burnbaum, who when I was at a and m used to go get the hot dogs.

Right now, he owns the whole planet, you know, But at the time Roger Burnbaum was the guy who got and got pizzas and stuff for us when we had to meet and Rody, yeah, but I always treated him nice.

Now he's the vice president of the Arista.

So he played If clivee Clyde falls in love with Jack and Jill, Clive calls up, I don't want to talk to any more white people in a suit and time just don't you know what I mean?

So I won't even meet with Clive.

So this goes on for a month or so.

Then Clive is very clever guy.

He calls back and he says, you're a respectable guy in the music business.

I'm a respectable guy in the music business.

Let's say we don't talk about any of this stuff and we just have lunch.

He says, that makes sense.

He says, how could you refuse just having lunch.

I was like, okay, He's gonna come correct, Okay, we just go go have lunch.

So Carol comes with me.

We go to lunch and one thing leads to another.

Clide says, so what are you planning on doing with all the time.

Before he gets finished talk, Carroll says, Rahul, make a record.

They starting to negotiate ninety I thought like, yeah, like this has been prepped and ain't I'm part of it.

I'm out the loop again once again.

And so that's how we started talking about that stuff.

And you know, he said, I'll get you the best.

Yeah.

We were talking about what to do, and to me, I said, I don't want to have an album like David T.

Marker where they just kind of played on the jazz stations on that.

I said, I want to be on Kiss FM, Top forty radio d DA da DA.

And so he told me what had to happen if I want to be on top for the race.

He said, well, if you make you don't make a record like all of them with all them notes and chords da da.

If you cut it like Jack and Jill, I get the three chords, boom, we got it.

So we made a deal.

I told him I'll never write a song have more th three chords.

Okay, it's gonna be intro verse card, it's gonna be very predictable, intro verse course verse chors bridge, and you know, I said, I'm gonna do that.

It'll be three minutes and forty five seconds long, and it'll be some chords, and we have some great lyrics and story and that's the end that we see the melody being gonna cover up the melody with a bunch of playing and that.

He was like, okay, I said, but can you get I want to be on Kiss FM and Da Da Da d they told him.

So we had that conversation and then we had an interesting conversation.

He said to me, I'll get you the best producers, I'll get you the best studio of record plan, I'll get you the best ring, I'll get you the best of everything.

And I just told him, you know, I really don't want none of that.

What I like to do is just go home and cut it home.

Because by this time I put a little sixteen track and board and all that stuff, and me and Reggie Doser with my Dosie brother, we wired the whole thing ourselves.

Took us two months.

I mean when I say wired, I don't mean plugged in.

I'm talking about all the solder and George wired everything did the whole.

I had to give him my TV set to keep going.

At one point I wish I had a video crack deal, pretty much like a crack deal, you know.

And for those who think I wasn't dedicated, I recorded my brother's band in ABC in early seventy four, wiped out twenty seven thousand dollars, which was a lot of money in nineteen seventy five cent.

And then I had spent eighty seven thousand dollars on studio equipment and putting the studio in the house, at which everybody then was one hundred percent sure I had lost my mind.

At the same time I lost the song with litls hair and getting kicked out of A and M just a whole bunch of things going wrong.

So at that point, everywhere I went, they would say, there he is, there is I can't believe that's the idiot, right They spent all his money, plays the hell of a guitar, but he's letting all his money doing other stuff, you know.

And just to clarify, what was the song with wil said, you make me feel like I feel like dancing.

You make me feel like dancing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So things are going like really south in a fast sense.

So we wired a studio and I just told Climb, I like to cut it home if you don't mind, right, and his words to me.

He thought about it and he said, okay, he says, but if you screw it up, you know we'll listen to it.

If you screw it up, then let's do it the other way.

I thought that was fair.

That was fair, right, So give me a good shot at and I thought I could deliver it.

The next thing that happened.

I had done Boss gags and a bunch of other stuff with Bill Shane, who was the really prominent engineer there.

I think he did the Asia album for Steely Dan Need won Grammys, and at the time he was probably the most prominent engineer in the business.

All of a sudden, Bill Shane, who I've been working with for years, he shows up at my house right now, I know this is the work of Kavala Ruffalo and Carrol Childs and everybody else.

They're like, Bill, you management, yeah, everything.

Wait a minute.

They were with Earth when a fire and Earth Fire okay.

So so they come over to my house to listen to the music, and so they had no chair from the city, and so they'll stand up and they're thinking, what kind of place is this?

I got cables on the roof, the stuff, the drums in the bedroom, and Mike's hanging in front of the things.

We don't have enough money for Mike's stands, you know.

So things are looking pretty raw and rough, and so they send Bill Schnee over in my house to talk me out of it, basically, and Bill listens to the song where I cut it, and he goes back.

He says, well, besides, the eight of the tracks are out of phase, and you don't sound that bad, he says, not what I would do, he says, But if it's a hit, it's a hit.

You know.

I'm mentioning this because the turning point at that stage is when before then everything I did was stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid except write some good songs to play the guitar.

Once Bill Schnee said that that record was gonna be okay, nobody ever questioned about any of my studio stuff again ever in life.

That was the end of it.

Blessing I had the big boy come over and he's put he put his hand on me.

That was it.

Right.

Next thing I know after that, Prince was coming over right because he came over and he was like what is He came to Caballo Ruffalo and they were trying to sign Prince and he wasn't signing.

He says, what y'all can do for me is take me over a race house because I hear he's got a studio.

That's all he wanted to do.

So they called me up.

They said, man, Prince wants to come over your house.

We're talking to him about that.

He says, but he just wants to see the studio.

In the house.

He ain't saying nothing else but that, right, And they said, well, you know he's gonna come over and he ain't gonna talk much.

You know, he's gonna say much.

It wasn't like that all.

When I got done and I said, he didn't want to talk to you guys, we went hang.

I was take him for a ride in the Rose Royce and we were cruising the Sunset Boulevard and you know, and he just wanted to get the studio equipment his house.

So we he didn't have quite as much money.

So we didn't get him a Jage twenty four like I had the MCI stuff.

So we got him a Soundcraft board.

Then I got my I got Yeah Soundcraft, and I got Steve flew back to Minneapolis and we put it in there.

And I remember he had a BMW.

Six thirty six, and so I got a stereo system done in the car like my stereo system was done in the car.

And we were hanging out, you know.

And so Warner Brothers wanted me to produce the next album.

I think it was sexy dance on all that stuff, right, So he comes back to my house the next trip to LA and he plays me what he got.

You know, we're supposed to be working on it.

And you know, I mean, I probably talked myself out of a lot of money, but I just told the truth.

I was young.

I heard the album.

I said, I don't know see what to do with this.

This sounds great like it is, you know.

So I told Warner brother y'all should leave him alone.

This sounds great just like it is.

And so they put it out like it wasn't.

The rest is History is a hit.

The rest is history.

Yeah, In fact, I'm finishing a studio now, and what's so sad about it is every studio I've ever built, Prince was one of the first guys there.

Well, he is not coming to this one, unfortunately.

I was planning on you know, when I started working on this one was like a year, so going like, oh yeah, we'll get hing my boy over here.

Blessed, you know, we go back to the right the way, with the old days, the way we used to do it, you know, and this will be the first one.

He ain't making it too.

That was important to me because here's another guy that was that had one head record at the time.

But at least what it made me think is I wasn't a complete idiot, because remember, everybody's making me feel like an idiot.

So now here comes Prince coming over, and the only thing he cares about is what's he doing over there?

I want to do that.

Then Larry Graham came over and he got the same stuff I got and cut one of the one in a million on the same same system.

Same way.

Wow, And it's like in his home.

Oh yeah, he put the same he said he did.

Larry told me he did exactly what I did.

Put in the bedrooms.

Boom, cut it and that was it.

But what's the sound that radical back then too?

To what was what was wrong in the studio is unlike it is today.

You guys have applefires.

Everybody brings in their own gears bringing there.

Each studio there had its own sound sort of and each the engineers all stayed with sort of one studio, and so you would be with their sound.

And it's not that the your sound was bad, but if you wanted to do something different or you had something different in your head, if you're paying two hundred dollars an hour, you can't think about it.

You know, you got to move.

So yeah, yeah, So what Prince want to do is just play with the guitar sound.

Let me play with a different sound, Let me play with a different drum sound for men.

Let me see what that would do.

And so when you had the equipment at your house, they would allow you to do that, fucking out the system.

Yeah, and it was just the beginning of it.

So everybody kept saying, you can't do it.

The walls don't work, this don't work, and it just wasn't true.

Everybody said the equipment would break.

You need a tech person.

Now I never had a tech person.

Nothing broke, and so it was you know, it turned into a different scene.

You know, if you read Clive's book, was nice about his book.

First thing he says is, yeah, we did this a year before Prince and the year before anybody did it.

We'd experimented with that and did it, you know, and it made me feel better by myself, just to see some other people that I respected thought that I wasn't crazy because I had been hearing you're crazy, you're crazy for so long.

To hear two other guys say yeah, I don't think it's that crazy, that's all that good idea and then they go do it and have success with it too, was really rejuvenating.

Well, I would figure, especially this is the error in which Stevie, who's constantly reinvented himself and doing the one man thing by himself.

I would figure that all the labels would have been salivating for, like, you know, we want to armor.

You know, yeah, you would think so.

But they just wanted somebody, and they didn't understand that.

They just want somebody in their box and you know, send them to the record plant.

You know, they think was get this engineer, get this arrange and send them to the plan.

Let's see what happened.

Get this producer, get your you know someone, so the producer, let's go.

You know, I got I gotta tell a funny story about this.

I don't.

I don't even think Ray knew this.

When Ray's sitting with us at the Tonight show and we're going over this right now.

This is about like four months after like my dad's passing.

It was weird.

I knew one of these days someone's gonna trigger the floodgate of tears, but I think it's going to be the sound of rape party.

You said that at the time, he said, Man, it just broke me up.

My whole goal was just like you wanted to escape A and M Records without like people saying you freaking down and cry.

I was like, all right, I gotta get out this moon and I gotta make it to my office.

You know, none of the Roots series, so they don't clown me.

I try to get glad.

I didn't, no glasses nothing.

I'm like balling like a mother.

So I think I just ran out the room like I.

Was dabbing, like.

And it was this song Jack and Jail particularly that's yeah, it's like just.

To hit him, just hit it.

Just it just well because that was the first song I sang.

I sang in the second grade pageant.

Like at performing arts you have to display some sort of talent or whatever.

And so I remember I sang.

Jack and Jail the second grade and I see my parents and right, yeah, right, and so it was just a memory.

But I mean there's nothing like the song like make me sad whatever.

It was less grief though, man, Like remember I expected like that, it just put you in that place.

Yeah, but it was just such an unexpected thing.

And like I was like, man, I cannot see the roots and Steve and Ray Parker Jr.

Seeing me crying.

But don't you think it's interesting?

Because I was thinking about about your music, and I feel like Ray Parker Junior's music, especially for seventy late seventies eighties babies, it gives them their members of an era, like it's kind of like a joyful time when you were.

No worries and you was my mama's first crush.

That was when my aunt had money.

My aunt like she loves you, I mean she was how I first got introduced to your music and she would always buy, you know, the records and stuff, and like she had all the radio albums and everything.

And it was interesting to me hearing you talk about your journey to becoming a singer.

How you know that was something that I guess maybe you were a little reluctant to do, but I always thought you were like the coolest one for ever.

Right, here's the trick I was.

I was a musician first, and I knew it was supposed to sound like So when I first started singing, it was out of two.

I mean, I don't need nobody to tell me.

I heard myself.

So I surrounded myself with people who could sing, and then I started working on it.

It's just like lifting weights.

If you do it long enough, you get your voice and you get to go.

But it wasn't until I think the third album when I did, and Woman These Love is the first real commercial record I sang all the way through by myself, you know, like Jack and Jail is me, but it's also Jerry, and it's also R and M and Jerry sitting up behind notes by the way.

Woman Need Love album, that's the one with the white pants and the peach back and.

The other woman was the one.

That's why I said somebody was doing that was that.

Was like I just can't get over loving you.

That's like.

We gotta We're still in recreation cocaine period.

Right, Why are we always associated with drugs?

But I don't do any drugs, just saying no, no, I know that I didn't do it, but but you're absolutely the worst tragedy to black people, just like this recreational drug period.

But yeah, that was the thing, like my an would always pay your records.

And the thing that later on, I mean, I'm listening to this stuff as a kid, but listen to it later on.

The thing that I always thought was jenius about what you did is that your presentation was very like smooth and like very sophisticated.

But the lyrics like you'll be saying by somebody.

Yeah, I was like, damn, Like the I don't want to know about yours, you don't know about mine.

It don't make sense to look too hard for what your.

Heart don't want to love.

He made affairs sound like, yeah, a woman needs loves, it makes sense.

It's like she yet, yeah, your woman should get you'll get your heart broke out.

The homie yeah, don't get.

So how did you how did you organize radio?

I mean, at what point did you bring?

Uh was Arnel Carmichael and now.

He was in my brother's band, Rnel and Vincent What was your brother's band's name?

Energy?

Perry Coomu had had a really good quote and they said like, what's the secret to your success?

And he says, well, I never reach I mean I don't try too hard.

But again it's it's that where it's where did our love go?

Theory?

You you had it, especially with with with Jerry Knight, someone that can sing, s a and g you know, to provide that.

But what gave you the wisdom especially on your first album?

Because I'll be honest with you, I didn't learn this lesson until twenty years into my career.

Like I've yet.

Now that I have a wisdom, I'm gonna try and apply it to the next album.

But it took seventeen records from me to figure out, Like, no, all this complex stuff you're doing, like you gotta do something simple, But there's an art too simplicity, Like I like, people tend to look down on it.

But what gave you the wisdom to keep it at a digestible level that wasn't so complex that it wasn't alienating.

I mean, but it was still appealing.

But yet here's what took me down a path, let's say, and I think it was a small tunnel.

And this is why I asked your opinion on Clive because I know that he has a very narrow tunnel of this is a hit, this is not a hit exactly.

He just you stayed with him for the longest, so obviously you had out.

Yeah.

Yeah, well it's a narrow tunnel.

Especially when you think about music.

You have to think about what is your gift to music?

What are you talented at doing?

What can you do?

What can you not do?

I can't dance like Michael Jackson, still can't.

You can put me on Dancing with the Stars.

I'm good for the first week, but you know I can't do the spin.

I can't just can't do it.

I don't have my bones, don't beat with the drums like they ain't gonna happen.

I ain't gonna go So I figured out a long time ago.

I don't think I'm ever gonna sing like Luther van Drus I'm not gonna sing it like Gladys Night.

I'm not gonna so therefore, take that away from the plan.

I ain't gonna get like Marvi.

Take that out the puzzle.

The people who played way too many notes and way too much jazz at which I could have done, they never got on top forty radio, So take that out the mix, right, can't do that.

Now you got the musical genius guys, the Stevie Wonders and all that kind of stuff.

They can figure out complex chords Maurice White Earth and find it somehow get back to another chord eighty chords later and it still works on the radio.

Steely Dan, I don't know what they're doing.

I don't understand that.

Take that out the mix.

So now you left with my hero that I try to patter myself off of on the first record, Casey in the Sunshine Man.

Wow, this came out of wow.

But you are right.

I don't want you all to go to sleep.

I'm trying to keep you awake.

I heard k C sing get Down Tonight, right, it was a number one record.

It was jamming the people up dancing, and I said, he's singing two notes.

Do a little dance, meg, a little love, get down today, even the verse honey, honey, me and you and every now and then woo woo woo woo woo.

That was the big one, but everything else fade out there to do, you know?

And I thought about it.

I said, well, you know what, he ain't singing all the notes like everybody else.

He's got to hit.

I could do that.

I may not be able to do that gladys Night, but I can do that.

And so I said, you know, there's gotta be a where you just gotta channel it right to get those simple chords and to get it to move in such a way that it's comfortable for you, which I think Mick Jagger and a whole bunch of other people have really done, really really well.

They figured out their style, their sound, and just play those chords that work for you.

Man, the things you learned on question only on I never I wouldn't have put that one together as well, two notes.

But you're making absolute sense both off.

My career is not ship, man, I got add.

Life to it, that's right.

And the lyric thing for me, which we were talking about, I'll never forget.

If a couple of companies I went to early on they kept saying your lyrics suck.

I got tired of hearing your lyrics suck.

So I started period when I was like eighteen nineteen years old.

They kept saying your lyrics suck.

Your lyrics suck, you know, And I said, you know what, I already got the music thing.

I'm gonna work on this lyric thing, listener.

So I started listening to Like Me and Missus Jones from a whole new standpoint.

When I heard it was a kid, I heard the orchestra bump bub bu bu.

But but but I said, this sounds like Lawrence welk, what are they doing in Philadelphia?

You know?

Then I never heard we needed the same cafe every day.

I mean, I was just too young to get it, you know.

Then I started listening to the songs like I saw the hell of the story, No Mo Didy like.

That, you know.

I re listened to Let's Get It On.

I was listening to a different way that was going, and it seemed like all the songs had deeper meaning to me, especially the hollandoja holland songs okay, which they always had nursery rhymes and they tongue in cheek.

If you could beat me rocking.

You can have my chair feed five four fun.

I can smell the presence of somebody, you know, somebody else's been sleeping in exposure.

What was their secret to did they tell you our formula is?

Well, they ain't had no for hi.

First of all, Lamont and Brian and they get in the week.

They said, they just go, you know, sit in the house for two or three hours and write four or five hits and be done with it.

You know.

That's what I said.

That's what I said.

I said, it ain't a lot of encouragement.

Lama I down.

They sitting down.

Brian had the classical stuff, so that's him putting on them classical chords.

Lama would come up with ridiculous lyrics, and Eddie did a little bit of everything, you know, so he had stuff.

But they do really just sit down and say, well, you know, Barry called us up, said we need one on the four times with on dyn Ross.

You know, we know it's a big meeting with smoking everybody there.

So we just write four five up, you know, not that, and then we go back to the rest of what we're doing.

He said.

The records were coming in so fast, they were just giving them out to their friends, you know, said Gold Records.

They would come every weekend.

We just get rid of them, get out of the house.

So there's and again that's a different group.

Now Prince was in that group.

You know, we have a men and him would have a lot of dead space on the phone because I call him up and I'm cutting a woman.

He's loft and I know, I got a smash.

I'm working on this album.

I'm polishing and I'm getting it right.

And then he'd be talking about, you know, I cut twelve So he's talking about he cut eighty songs.

So we sitting on the phone and I'm like thinking myself, hell you do that for why don't you just cut ten good ones?

You know, when controversy was out, he sent me all the nineteen ninety nine, all the Purple Rain and all of the time, all of the girls.

I got all this music.

I'm like, what the heck is this right?

He says, He says, he says, well, a nineteen ninety nine album is a double pack album.

I said, why you that double pack album?

Nobody's buying that from no black folks at the time.

You can't tell it.

He says, and I'm gonna sell it at this regular price.

He says, I just Warner Brothers taking them too long to put the records out.

I don't want the stuff to get old, so I got to just put them in the record.

He say, said, I got the second record.

So he's trying to work, and he says, this is the movie.

So he's trying to do the movie when controversy just came out.

It ain't nobody even heard in nineteen ninety nine.

Yea, And I'm like, I like that little red Corvette song, But but what's this?

You know?

Down here?

Do Doo do do do doo doo dooo.

Dude, I'm like, what the heck is that?

You know?

So he would just write that many songs, you know, then it became apparent to me later.

You know, I think I was Soliarity and he was Mozart.

You know, you get that.

I watched the movie.

I was like, ah, feels familiar there, and you know, I forget.

You know, there was one time, like Hollando Johanna, the same thing.

There's one time he went to Rio and he wont the piano at the top floor, so they took a helicopter flew the piano and knocked the windows out.

We heard, yeah the windows up.

Yeah yeah.

So he's supposed to be there week doing whatever.

He stays a week and they knocked, They tear the knock it out, take the piano.

He comes back and say, I wrote a couple of albums.

So you know what?

And how about this?

It sounds crazy, but if that motivated you to write a couple of albums, I wish I could.

I knocked the windows out if you can get me two smash albums.

You know, even a good friend of mine who just died, Rod Temperton, always said he don't write nothing unless he's at his apartment on the freeway in worms, Germany.

This is Quest Love, Supreme Ware and Pandora.

And if you're just tuning in, we're into hour three with our special guest Ray Parker Jr.

And we're talking about the process for finding the right lyrics for a hit song.

So where's your sweet spot?

Like?

Where did these hits come from?

Where do you have to be?

I started with the lyrics.

I like a good story.

You could be telling me about you and your old lady, and you could let something slip out and I go, oh.

So you're sourcing information from your friends.

Ye.

I don't like to be singing about myself.

That ain't good.

It's like taking your underwear down in.

Public, you know.

I like to expose, you know, especially if you put two or three relationships together, you can see a path in the pocket.

Then I take that.

Oh yeah, we're going with this because like a woman needs love.

I don't even know how much of that I wrote.

I mean, I had five girls in the studio, and while I went out to start how about this, I came back.

I'm sitting at the board and they're just gossip.

Yeah, honey, he got things coming.

If you can think that, that's the way things used to be.

You know, you can hear him talking about you know, back in the day.

Back in the day, you know got to me.

I used to tell people, don't tell nobody, don't tell noybody.

Now I don't care if you're tell or nothing.

If he could do it, I can get me some too.

Now, you know, he getting I'm getting it.

I was like, look at this, And then Gloria already was on the news at the time.

All this stuff is going.

She was a studio but the girls were writing the song.

They were talking about tigns of change, things ain't the same.

I'm like, oh, no longer will we be taking Oh I like that?

Yeah, And one girl's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, he could do that if you want to come and leave me, come home and get his feelings her.

I said, oh, I like that.

One day you come from work, you're feeling her.

I just imagining the thing together.

No longer will the women are today be accepted that All of a sudden, I said, this is it.

It's a song.

This is it, you know, And I tell you the biggest thing in the song, And this is why women are so sensitive to the lyrics.

I said, she will fool around just like you do.

Was not a hit, didn't work.

She will fool around meant that she was.

She will fool around.

That's wrong.

She can fool around.

She has the option to.

She has the option to.

Let me tell you when I changed this, she will so she can.

All the girls smiled in the studio.

You gave us the option.

If I had said she will on the radio, I don't even know if that would have worked.

But when I went to she can, it was a crowd pleaser.

All the girls are like, what do you mean she will fool around?

I was like, well, you know, I'm trying to say that she can't to his can over that work all the girls whatever, so that she can.

And I was like, really, y'all, just over one word, I either got to she can, mean you did it.

It puts it back on you.

You did it.

If she will, she's already doing it.

And you know what, I at that point in my life, all my songs were so beautiful and romantic, and the girls and everybody loved me.

You know, I wanted to be the bad boy a little bit.

Now, I just you know, it helps them.

I just you told I wanted to show just a little other side.

I mean it's like, you know, yeah, I got it.

Did you feel a little pressure that, like, okay, it's nineteen eighty two.

Times are changing, Like I better come out with some I mean, because you didn't even really feature your your your guitar mastery, let alone your rock guitar mastery.

All that much on these records.

You really contained but that song, yeah, it was because I want to make sure I wasn't a guitar on the record first.

But I started saying, yeah, I could play a little more guitar.

But I heard I tell you what inspired that song was.

Rick Springfield had a tone called jess Girl, right, just I wish I had a girl like Jessic's girl, you know, And I thought that what a punk attitude that is.

You know, I wish I had go take the bitch.

I just thought that, ain't no, ain't the attitude.

I wish.

And he's sitting back dreaming about wishing when he hit what he had go get up it.

But you kind of had that attitude as well.

On Jamie, Well you you met it up saying she always minds.

But he also said, like, you know, keep it to yourself, like I don't hear, like when you had to bust somebody up.

I saw your lady the other day, but you know the other woman.

I'm just the average guy, fool around a little on the side.

Never thought it would him ount too much, never met a girl who was so tough.

Now, who would have thought of one night stand could turn into such a hot romance.

But when she did it to me, I slept and fell in love.

I mean, it was just a true statement.

You know that, And then you know the reason I knew the rules of the game.

You hit it once, breakaway clean.

I should have never gone back, I know, but I had to have just a little bit.

My friend.

My friends laugh, and that's all right.

I may be a fool, but I know what I like.

I hate to have to cheat, but it feels better when that's sneak.

Okay.

Then the dender line Clive Davis likes, Oh, this affair is unique.

All my life, I never met such a freak.

And she keeps me going strong for so long that by the time I get home.

It's all gone.

Makes me want to grab my guitar and play with it.

All okay, So when you're taking this to clad, he heard that, it just went, oh that's it.

I love that he heard that.

He said, Oh, that's it, he says about it.

By the time we got to make me want to grab my get he says, play it out again and want to play with it all night long.

He says, oh, that's smash.

But do you know what a.

Unique position that is?

Because the legend of Clive Davison being so hard to please, as far as I know him, knowing instantly when there's a hit like that's some rare rare ship to make him that enthused about anything.

He loved Jack and Jill.

It was his most enthusiast.

He said, smash.

He loved the woman these love, loved the other woman.

He was not so into.

Can't change that m hm.

That was what he didn't like.

He didn't liked that.

He wasn't into that.

In fact, that they were canning the whole album.

He said, okay, pick one, we put it out.

If it's a hit, we put the albount If not, go back and record.

That was that kind of year, so you.

Just turn change that.

That's what got that album released.

Yeah.

But what was interesting, and and it's me bragging on Clive, is that he really did do the right thing.

He said, okay, you you picked one, you think that's it, let's put it out.

And he didn't like, let's teach him and not put no money behind all.

He actually went and promoted and gave it it's all and the song blew up and he said, okay, was it?

That's any of that?

Put the album out.

Another one he didn't really like that much was Ghostbusters.

Wow.

He said, you can take that to Giff and when you go.

The shade rock corn album at all.

No, he didn't like that.

He wanted to start over.

Really yeah, what didn't you like about it?

Hen't like nothing about it.

He didn't hear no hit like anything, nothing, And you know, there was everybody was because Jack and Jill was a novelty song.

They thought it was, you know, and which I thought was Here's what I thought was funny.

Lamon Dojan and McKinley Jackson were teasing me about writing a nursery right myself.

But I learned it from you guys, you know, y'all the guys taught me how to wanted young man singling free of me.

Y'all taught me this stuff.

So I was writing imitating them, you know.

So can I ask you when did you.

Dissolve radio like and what was the range rem where you guys like, Okay, are we really a band.

Or is it just like let's let's talk about that because that's fun.

First of all, I love all the guys in the radio and we're best of friends today the ones that are left.

And when I first put the band together, I was a young kid and I just wanted to split everything.

Now even though it was my record deal, they were signing me.

I had the studio, I paid all the money, I wrote a song.

It didn't matter at me.

I was like this, let's let's get five guy, let's split everything.

That was my thing, good thing.

God made sure that didn't happen.

The band led by Jerry.

The funny thing about Jerry Night he's the biggest trouble maker, but he was my best buddy and he would apologize for it later.

He didn't hold back.

He would say, man, I don't know why I did something that stupid.

You know, he broke up with Jerry and Olive.

But so the whole thing was Jerry was the first guy to put the pool the band again and say, look, we don't want to be signed to that white label Arista that has the Bay City Rollers and Barry Man.

We don't want to be signed.

Why don't you sign?

We just want to get paid a salary.

So that took me off of to split the money thing.

Wait, that was his words, that was their words.

They all collectively got together.

Well, what was another option for them?

The option for them was to sign the record they only take one fifth and one piece of the band.

They didn't want to do that.

They didn't want no piece of the band.

They want cash, and I'm sure either the big picture the final was spearhead by Jerry.

I tried to talk him out of it.

They weren't hearing it.

They all wanted money, and they wanted money I didn't have.

I think they wanted five hundred dollars a week on tour or something like that, and me by the instrument.

So I went and borrowed like two hundred grand from tour support from Ariston to pay these guys ahead of time.

Because the record has just came out.

I had no money.

And what was interesting is when the record hit, the single went goal, album went go Jack and Jail album went gold in London.

Now we're playing Hammersmith Ody in London and I go out with the head of the British company, right, and then we go out to some club and he's saying, yeah, man, things are gonna grasp the man.

Life couldn't be better.

It's just like a dream come true.

He says, well, so, I don't know how to tell this, but your band wants a separate deal without you because they had met some British producers.

I forgot who he was inspiring them to leave some of your guys, he said, some of your guys are leaving.

And I'm like, I'm looking, this is what is the president?

The President of England, not Clyde, but the President of England.

British up and he's speaking of British accent.

I'm like, he thinks something.

He thinks black people all look the same.

He thinks somebody else?

What's he talking about?

Right then he names the names.

Man, I was about to cry so hired again.

I had to get up and go to bathroom.

I had to get him go to the bathroom.

I'm choking.

I had to go recompose myself and come back tell me what you just said again.

I couldn't wait to get back to the hotel.

So then we have our blowout meeting at the hotel and I'm sitting with the guys.

I'm saying what I said, what is this that you want to deal by yourself?

What is the what are you doing?

Then it all came out, well, you're getting all the royalties and we get nothing.

I said, you're getting the money you asked for that I borrowed and I'm still paying off on the last tour all the money that you took, and you took the keyboard, threw it off the stage.

That was three grand of my money, you know.

And I bought all the instruments.

Off the stage, threw it off the stage.

All who they must have saw the movie or something, you know, So it was interesting.

And then you know, Jerry looked at him and said, no, he's made five million on NET on the tour, five million on the first two.

They were eating popcorn when we were playing, you know.

But he thought I made five million net on the tour and another five men on the album.

I was like, really, because I'm in the whole right surface above and it wasn't so immediately three guys in the band quit right after the first album.

And think it was Charles, Jerry, and one Vincent and Vincent wasn't even studio guy.

I said, please don't leave, Vincent, you know, they can't use in the studio.

Not gonna do anything.

Don't worry.

We going with Jerry.

Jerry's gonna sign in to a deal.

Well, Jerry got a deal and didn't sign none of the guys.

So they're on Overnight Sensation, none of the Jerry Jointed.

They're not on none of that stuff, none of that and so Jerry, Jerry got in with Don curshion Bum.

Yeah, the producer.

Was it brainstorm?

Was he I'm messing him.

I'm messing up to name.

But that's the Don not Curshionbaum.

Yeah, David Kirshenbaum.

I'm sorry.

And he had cut a rock and roll record, so you know then, but Jerry came out here.

Man, I'm sorry to this.

So I looked at Jerry.

I said, you know, Jerry, this is nineteen seventy whatever.

I said, you heard a crossover.

You got get on R and B radio first figure top for the radio, sayce thing, he'll play none of this stuff.

Okay.

So I talked to him in the cutting over a nice sensation because he didn't have that on the album.

I always thought that was a radio record.

Of course, it sounds like a radio record.

How about this.

Even though he broke up the band, I'm still trying to save his but right, I said, man, look the record you played me.

Ain't nobody playing that?

It was all rock and roll.

I said, you need to cut.

Why don't you cut one and stick it on the back and see what you know?

And the one record was over nice sensation.

That saved him.

Then we started Ray Parker Junion Radio.

And then when I think another guy left and Clive just said, that's enough, all this personnel change.

We're going to rape Parker Jr.

That's it.

So he switched it like that.

But in the meantime, after Jerry messed up his album, then he got out and he didn't hire none of the guys in the band, so they were left in the cold.

Man so they didn't have my gig, and.

They didn't.

The leader is like for them, it was terrible.

They never recovered, you know.

So the leader left them in the coal and the next thing was was hooking g Area up with Oli, you know.

So I got those two together and they looked out for him again with with and so him and Ali they cut a big smash record with you know, there's no stuff, and then Jerry would go on stage without Ali, but Ali being in the dressing room with Jerry's already out there performing and he would just do crazy stuff, you know, he was he'd come up front, he was clean with he says, man, I did it, you know, even before he died.

I'm the one that got him out the hospital.

A few days before he died.

He passed away cancer.

He don in nineteen ninety seven, and we spent most of that year together.

He probably knew he was sick, and I didn't know he was sick, you know.

And he told me some things that I never never dreamed of because in my mind I was always trying to help everybody, because there's plenty of money for everybody, y'all go do it.

But he always wanted me to sign him and take his publishing, and he always wanted me to do it nice sent men.

I can't do that.

I'll show you how to do it.

You can take the money.

Like he did a bunch of songs with the Jets.

I was gonna say he broke Curiosity, Oh met those jets, Jet Jet Hero, Curiosity and a two or three other big hits for the Jets, On You, Rush On You.

And when he played me those songs, they sound like Jerry Night records, right.

And then all of a sudden he was fifty to fifty writer with Aaron zigg I said, who's Aaron Zigmund?

The song sound the same as it did last week that you played for me.

Well he got the deal.

He can get it.

Places what you're talking about, what you're talking about it's the same song amateur hour.

Yeah, And so he ended up splitting it and giving him all the production and the rest.

And in the end it was an interesting conversation.

Jerry looked at me.

He says, he says, you know what, I'm a genius number two guy.

And he was.

Even after he left the band, we would always talk.

He'd coached me on lyrics on the Other Woman, and he said, no, you can write a better verse, so you can write.

He was just guy.

He says, I'm a genius, number two guy.

He says, but you're the number one guy.

You should have signed my publishing.

I would have been better off.

And in hindsight, you know what, He's right.

I didn't see it.

Maybe he saw it.

My thing was where everybody can do this, let me just show you how to do it.

But everybody can't do everything.

You know, everybody.

It would have been better off because I would have paid him on time, represented songs.

He would have been cool.

But he said, he says, I'm a number two guy.

He says, he said, leaving by myself.

He says, I'll destruct everything destruct.

He says, how I am, It's that sabotage.

I told you, I can't help what happened.

He was conscious of it, and he said, that's what it is, he said, an change, that's it, he said.

But if you had led it and you had taken it, we would have got through this.

You know, for those just joined us, we're still talking to the Great Ray Parker Jr.

Uh going down, uh, not even going down, getting life lessons this quest Love Supreme on Pandora getting life lessons.

And we haven't even gotten the Ghostbuster.

I know, let's jump in the pool.

Let us jump in the pool.

Are you allowed to tell the Ghostbuster story?

What Ghostbuster story?

Exactly?

I won't tell you.

I will tell you everything you want to know, oh the best of my ability.

Okay.

So, as as a guy who he's done a little bit of scoring work and whatnot, you know, often have clients that will say, you know, let's take a song like, let's take Drake's hotline blink like you know for my show, cut us something like that, yeah, cut us something exactly.

So to lease here Hughey's side of the story, who's that?

Who's that?

All?

Right?

To hear Huey Lewis's version, Am I to believe that they pitched him the Ghostbusters movie.

He thought it was rather silly and didn't want to license I Want a New Drug to them because he thought the movie was silly and kind of dismissed it, and you know, just took his ball and went home.

And then is this where they come to you, like, well, first of all, well give me the let me give you my my take on it.

Yes, give me.

I didn't even know.

I never heard what you heard that song ever ever thought that Ghostbusters sounded like I want to still think it, so I don't either.

I never thought it did.

But yeah, but just here's what I found out later.

And this was only after I heard that they were doing a lawsuit something like that.

I guess they approached him first to write the song, to write a theme song.

I don't think they wanted his song, but I think they want him to write a theme song.

And then they put his song in the temp track along with three other songs that sound just like that song.

They also have one, four or five chords bar band cords.

Right, So if you were if you were in the room as a musician, you would know not to write neither one of us a ballad, because you know, that the guy wants up tempo barbers song, so hit the heade in that direction.

I had no idea to approach him.

I had no idea about any of that kind of stuff.

I think it was unfortunate that he named me in a lawsuit and named you know and all that stuff.

I tried to take him to dinner in Germany, but I guess this guy said, don't talk to that reg guy.

You know we're about to get mad.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, don't talk to that reg guy.

I had no idea what they were talking about.

When I go you, I ain't free, No got none of that sounds like the same song to me.

But I think that maybe he had a case because they called him first and they put his song in the temp track.

I think that's a thing for him in the movie company to discuss now on that on the settlement or whatever you call the settlement or whatever they got for it.

And I can't talk about the case.

And I'll tell you what because I have a genius lawyer named Don Passman and wrote the book.

I was like, what book?

Donald Passman is lawyer?

You wrote a book called Everything You Need to Know about the Music Business and the music business class I.

Took in college.

That was our textbook.

It was that and the Kashif book.

Those were two, but that was like the bible for well.

Donald Passman's oldest client is me.

I've been with him since the beginning.

And that's a whole nother story that goes through Bill Cosby back to Bill Cosby begin because Bill Cosby was represented by this firm that's not in the Yellow Pages or anything like, you know, and the only way you get into the firm is somebody brings Bill Cosby brought me into the firm, and that's how I met Don Passman.

It's at the beginning.

It's very much like Tom Cruise.

The frame is very much like that because there was a couple of people I told hibout it says, I can't find a phone umber.

I don't see any advertising.

They don't you know, they don't advertise.

They handle very elite group of people.

And so min lawyer came to me.

He says, okay, things have worked out or whatever.

He said to me, do you want to know what happened?

Right?

Ray Parker answered to do you want to know what happened?

Is guy anything to do with me?

I mean, what we're talking about it, right, he says, nothing to do.

I said, oh, that's interesting.

So and then he says, I just prefer not to tell you.

He says, because at the end of the day, we have a gag rule on this finding for whatever they're going to do.

He says, doesn't affect you.

And if I don't tell your daughter, you can't talk.

Okay.

So I've never broken the rule because I don't know anything about through.

I don't know what anything of it was.

It has nothing to do with me.

My name's on the song, I get paid.

I don't know what are your pockets?

Nothing to do with me.

I don't have So I never talked about it because I don't know anything about it.

But he talked about it.

Why the gaggro, like, who's it protect?

I don't know.

I don't know anything about it.

My lawyer said, you can't talk about it because you don't know.

That's a smart lawyer.

He says, I know you ain't gonna talk about it because you don't know nothing about it, which he's correct.

So now, in two thousand and three, I think it was VH one was coming calling me several times a week, which I thought, Wow, I ain't that popular.

Why am I.

Getting some any phone calls to be on TV?

And come to find out they had his version where they're now?

They want to have me on Wordy now and play them back to back.

Right.

So he said a bunch of stuff in which I sued him and I won.

He broke the gagri.

It was on TV.

And how about this, I like Huey Lewis in the news.

I don't have anything bad to say about him.

I never met him.

You guys seen each other in last years.

We've never seen each other ever.

And I think the sad part, in the irony part of I think he takes it more personal because of however it happened.

It's one of those things.

Just the bomb built it self.

But I really had nothing to try to do that.

And I think if he had any right, maybe he should have had it with the other guys that did it.

But for some reason it seemed to be directed in my direction more than I think it should have been.

Like I hear people talk about him, they say he's a nice guy.

Other people say I'm a nice guy.

Now when they're approaching you to do this, yeah, and I okay.

So the result is.

I mean, it's it's it's really a dead and it's it's a dead heat tie between who owns the national Halloween anthem.

I mean, it's either you or Michael Jackson, neck and neck.

But I prefer to think I'm the winner.

I mean Rod temper then just passed.

I love Rod, you know, like I took a picture.

I'm just saying, around this time is when your check start looking real nice.

Around this so you're thinking like that, I'm starting to get concerned because I'm the only living songwriter from Halloween left.

My Bobby bors pick I did some shows.

What he's gone now?

Rod Templeton is gone.

I mean, you're kind of lonely here.

I mean, but I guess if who you're gonna call for Halloween?

I mean Ray Park, you run out of still here.

So I mean, at the time, were you thinking like, yo, if I write the right song, this will be played.

This will be the happy birthday to you Halloween.

No, no, no, but you got admit that it's never died.

You're talking about that, and is it a burden?

Is it a burden that no is the winning lotto ticket of bird?

Does it ever get too heavy?

The whole I love you.

What do you say?

You know I love you?

Because dude, my ring tone, I mean, tell the people what they want.

Oh my god, you know, give the people what the people call me they tell me.

Don't answer the phone.

Let it ring through, you know, And so it's just you know, the screen logo for those you can't see that.

And if you ring the.

Phone, it plays not who you're gonna call, but who you're trying to call.

Leave your name and number after the tone.

Who you're trying to call.

I mean, you know by calling right now, I was call me, call me Nick, call me.

You're gonna like this?

Of course another question Ray Parker Junior's ring tone.

Yes, leave your name and number after the tone.

That's that available on.

We should make that available.

But as with all Ray Parker stories, you do want the juice right always, you guys are leaking for but you're way over there and it starts over there, all right.

In the Berry White days, there was a guy named Gary Lamel who ran Berry White's publishing company Aaron Schroeder at the time.

Right, okay, the other woman got a temp job working for Mary Lemel the Columbus Pictures.

Who I just happened to be me and her were doing whatever we were doing.

And so that hooked me back up with Gary Lynmel, who wanted me to save him by writing a song.

Oh my old friend.

That's how we made the connection.

Wow, Okay.

So he brought the project to you.

Yeah, and so he figured that I could.

He says, you got the right humor, you got the right thing, he says, I think you're right for the job.

I'll give you fifty grand.

Just go write the song whether we if we don't use it, you keep the money.

What the heck?

They had it like that, you know.

And it wasn't gonna be no record.

It wasn't gonna be into this.

It was twenty seconds of music at the library scene.

So I wrote a minute and fifteen seconds of it, just because I don't know how to do twenty seconds of music.

You know, by the time I do one group and go to the other group, I got a minute and a half, you know, men in fifteen seconds of men and ten seconds something like that.

And so I played the guy a little snippet I had, and that's what he loved and write.

He just loved it right, and went to the meeting he loved it, called me at three in the morning.

I was sleepy getting the stuff.

Girl.

Now there's some magic to those girls yelling go but there it's really hot.

Okay.

So now I was dating little valley girl.

In the valley.

I woke her up at five in the morning, told her to get her high school friends together because the messengers coming at eight thirty nine o'clock and I need to get these voices on.

And it was their first time there being a studio, so they were excited as they could be, like six to seven of them.

This is your recording at your house is no, this is recording at the American studio for them, So they're screaming and yelling ghostbusters, which I think made the magic in the record.

You know.

That's how the song came about.

And then we took two tape recorders and started linking the tracks together to make the song four minute song because I only had a minute and fifteen seconds of it.

And then the breakdown section that's just me playing some stuff over the same groove without the guitars and the bass and over dubbing and just making sections out of it.

But it's really only a minute and ten seconds of music, see Kent.

You can't.

But not that I think that when you tend to overthink it or try to like concoct like I'm gonna make an anthem for hollowing, it never happened.

No, you just gotta do it.

But he just wasn't even overthinking it was just like to you, was this just some arbitrary he grabs his fifty grand and see.

Exactly, I take the money.

I told my account you ain't gonna see it.

I'm spending this because my bonus.

My magave.

So at what point did you?

At what point was the oh god, like the holy shit, the this is my he's going too fast.

Let me tell you how the best idea of my life came.

Okay, okay.

The first thing is I got the music really quick.

I had all this stuff I was jamming.

I could not The guy wanted the words ghostbusters in the song, or I don't get my fifty grand.

Well we're front Detroit.

You don't get your fifty grand, just don't get it back.

We ain't get it back.

I'm gonna put it in there.

But it was impossible to sing ghostbusters, right, I mean, it was just it wasn't even Ghostbusters.

I created that it was Ghostbusters.

That's what they kept saying, Ghostbusters.

We want Ghostbusters in the song.

You heard it now, So it's not fair.

But at the time, they hired plenty of writers over the time span of a year, and nobody could get that word in the song.

It was a stupid word to sing.

You can't sing Ghostbusters.

It just doesn't sing.

So you're saying other people were trying to demo and yeah, the guy said they had been doing this a year.

They don't like.

None of the song.

Directed don't like none of who tried.

I don't know some famous people tried.

But it's interesting he says that because that's the same thing like Bobby Brown did on the second Ghostbusters.

He didn't sing it either on our own joint.

Well, he didn't sing it either.

See he was off Yeah, but he.

Was off the hook.

They wanted Ghostbusters in the song.

Right, because he didn't have to say Ghostbuster got a theme song.

So here's what.

So here's where we're at and I'm sitting there.

So I got the song done and I haven't called the girls yet because I don't have anything myself.

So it's like now it's three thirty four o'clock in the morning, my fifty grand starting to float out the window, you know.

And then this commercial comes on TV, of which I wasn't really trying to write a commercial, but I remember the part of the film they had the Ghostbusters with the backpacks and they had the phone number under it.

And when I was half asleep trying to stay awake but trying to write this lyric, I was dozing off, half asleep, and on comes this commercial on TV with like some insect repelling guys or the you know, the exterminator guys, and they got their backpacks.

They look just like the Ghostbuster guys.

To me, or to wash this troubles down the drain or whatever that you know, roller router guy something, some kind of guys like that.

And so I'm looking at it when they got the phone number, who do you call?

And I went, that looks just like the Ghostbuster guys.

We're gonna make it who you gonna call?

Right?

So that's Detroit, I said, yea.

I said, well, I'm just gonna like not seeing the words Ghostbusters.

I'm gonna let the crowd go go Busters, and I just go who you're gonna call?

So my song is who you Gonna call?

I had no idea what it was gonna be commercials and rested, I mean didn't take it, but that call on like wildfire.

As soon as I sung that, the director loved it.

He says, oh, man that I like the way you're going.

And he was a Jewish guy.

So he says, I'm not afraid of any ghosts.

He said, but you going, what are you saying?

I said no, it's like, I ain't afraid no ghosts.

Man.

He says, I like how you phrasing that.

He says, I like, I like the phrase.

He says, I said, y'all had a background.

He says, no, I like how you're saying it.

I like, you go out, I'm not afraid of any ghosts.

I'm like, and I'm looking at him like I'm looking at where we at, Dude, where we at?

And I'm saying, no, I ain't afraid no ghosts.

He says, say it again slow, I said, I ain't.

Afraid no ghost.

And I hadn't really thought about what I was saying.

I said, no, I ain't afraid no ghost.

He said, I like that, man.

So we did re redid that and that's what changed the whole world because when they when they licensed the song for commercials, it has nothing to do with the movie because they don't license Ghostbusters.

They license who You're Gonna Call, and they put their own name in the back of it.

Ah that's real.

Okay.

My question is are you is this your song?

Or is this like whenever someone wants to utilize Ghostbusters, do you have to go through a whole protocol of getting the movie company?

And I know it, he was on it.

It's pretty much myself now.

Now there are protocols.

Okay, if the movie was released like this film, there's a three month moratorium on each side.

Dude, I totally forgot.

Ghostbusters got released again this year.

There's a three month moratorium on the front where they didn't want people to do it.

But I have such a wonderful deal that if you offered me a million dollars to do it within that three month period, they can say no, you can't do it, but then they give me a million dollars.

Oh so I still don't lose the money.

Oh, but I mean doing it as in, you can't perform it anywhere or are you for me?

I'm just talking about that if they want to use the commercials and other stuff.

You know.

You know, when you do a film thing, they don't want you in conflict with the film, right, so you.

Can't do any commercials for the first three months after it comes out.

Now, but you on the words too, like the merchandising.

The merchandising.

So we're coming out with a clothing line of Ray Parker Junior Collections clothing line because I think they figured out that on the words.

So they want to put the words with the characters.

So we have a t shirt line and clothing line coming out.

Did they use the yours in the two I haven't seen part the new one.

This is probably three by the way, Oh part they used a snippet of it.

In my opinion, they should have played the themes every time.

No, but they put it in there some parts.

But you know every time.

To me, Indiana Jones, that's how you know, the good guys a client just play the same thing, some of it.

I think, I hope next time they do that, you know, But they played a little bit of mine.

Then they have twenty other versions where they mixed it up and did it different ways, you know, and then they cut a whole album with these guys.

I mean I got writs probably ten songs on the album, but nobody had a hit.

On the album.

The movie did well, you know, they tried it.

They tried it.

Maybe next time they'll just go.

So when you're turning in this master, at what point do you realize.

I have the national anthem for Halloween two weeks after it comes, and it will never die.

It will never Halloween.

We didn't know till later.

I didn't even think about Halloween.

But so you're not seeing a grand level Halloween.

The only thing I knew is the record came out.

Well, I had already been told what's going to happen.

You know, the movie in those days will come out almost nine months later overseas in different places.

So Clive had already said, okay, we released a single in front of the film, and then when the film comes out, we'll wait and release it overseas da.

Da da dah.

And they in those days they want to stop as many imports as possible, so they just let it lo lo And within the first two weeks we had sold so many records, and clients says, what do you think is happened to their export and the records.

We gotta ship it out overseas, he said, But the movie's not coming out for eight nine months.

We're going to be way ahead of the film, he says.

I'm torn between putting it out, he said, but my distributors are making me put it out because they're selling so many of them.

And I think within the first few weeks we had sold three and a half million records overseas.

There were exports, so they forced him into release in it, he says, why do you think they're buying it?

They don't understand what you're saying in Italy or other places.

I said, if I knew that, I would have cut.

A bunch of them.

We were talking about, I don't know why they buy the record.

Put the record out, you know so and by meet Them.

When Meet Them came that February, were repped to like I think they gave me a record with fifteen million sound albums or something like that.

Was just crazy.

It's one of those songs that took off every everybody.

There was something in the song that so infectious, are so happy that you didn't need to know what language it was, You didn't need to understand everything.

It just went number one and fifty two con trees.

It just just went everybody, and it wasn't a burden on you, like, oh no, all that money to me to the.

Weigh in my pocket, down my pants.

What's your family saying?

Now?

Oh then, oh yeah, yeah, he's all right, he's gonna be alright.

Aside from the Ghostbusters.

Uh, we read that like you're I think the highest paid guitar, Like the highest.

Oh that's nonsense.

I read that thing.

Yeah, well, you know what what I like about it is, you know you read.

You can't believe everything you read.

First of all, my kids they come up to me said, Dad, we read your net worth two million dollars, right, all these different things.

Two million dollars.

I thinking, where do you get that number from?

We just spent a million dollars just on the studio in the backyard.

Okay, what about the rest of the place or whatever they do?

And then that article comes out, he's the highest thing he made, He's worth four hundred million dollars.

He just made an eighty nine million last year.

I'm like, I did know.

Somewhere in the middle, I don't even know if it's.

The middle somewhere between this.

It's kind of crazy, this thing.

I mean, who comes up with this stuff?

Who writes this stuff on the matter?

And then my neighbor he's worth like eighty million, I mean, all these different and Denise Wims was worth almost a billion dollars.

Yeah, she's worth like nine hundred and fifty billion dollars on the same website, the same website.

Silly, get it.

So I'm just singing there's all these numbers and telling my kids, I said, you can't believe everything you read.

Look at this right here.

You know what other stuff were you able to put your money in and like investing and stuff just to stay you know.

Stay well.

You know, I lost lots of money years ago, especially in stock market when I got too greedy.

But recently I had a really a good landfall.

I bought a boat bunch of a Tesla stock when it was that twenty seven dollars, I mean a meaningful a lot enough where I made in five months few million dollars.

I got to leave.

And you know what's even better, because I'm older and wives are actually cashed me.

I still got a lot of it, but I cashed in and took most eighty percent off the table.

I was smart enough to finally, you know, so I look for little things like that.

I mean, I do the safe stuff now, real estate, a little bit, bonds, you know that kind of stuff.

Stay out of trouble, pay your taxes, get done.

You want to be going to jail like the other guys, you know, keep the country rolling, and just just do normal stuff.

If you, if you, if you pay attention.

The key thing with money is just not to buy more stuff than you got money for.

Everybody wants to look like this.

If you like this, it's okay, look like that.

Don't go up there, you know, just don't get out of hand with it and get stupid, you know, life lessons life.

Yeah, so okay, I guess during the tornado of the success the single, I noticed that in eighty four you didn't put a record out though, no Ghostbusters, and they had me all over the place and did I section single man Matt.

Year or later we did.

Put a record out Chartbusters, right, And that was Clive Davis's thing.

I never get.

Yeah, it was the Greatest Hits, which we'd already had the Greatest Hits album the year before.

I said another Greatest Hits.

Let me tell you something.

We packaged the greatest hits.

I had a cold on one of the songs.

He said, just put the thing out of cut The stuff sold a million plus albums.

Wow.

Right, So Clive was right again.

I mean, it was an unbelievable payday for not a lot of work.

So that really happened great.

You know.

Was I don't think that man should sleep alone?

Was that on sex album?

Second?

What was the end of Arister?

The next record?

Second?

And that was the end of Arister.

Yeah, that's why they didn't promote anything.

They just kind of let it go bye bye.

But okay, that was just one slight blimish and you wanted it off or was it?

Oh no, No, I was off for Arista in eighty three before Ghostbusters.

Oh yeah, and it was.

It was one of those things where I think it was a missing standing.

I never wanted to leave there, but Clive wanted me to do a Dion Warwick album and he called my manager and somehow they were arguing about the price, and he says, well, if it's gonna cost down, I want to know what did it take to renegotiate Ray?

And we think, what do you Ray for?

I got four more years left to the contract, and somewhere in there he wanted me to do an album, and to me, it was a total misunderstanding and things got out of hand and he'd offered some really low amount of money and everybody got nervous, and David Geffen offered like an enormous amount of money and it was too late to turn back.

Sort of a deal.

Yeah, So I ended up signing with He hate losing your yeah, but we remained friends.

I actually went back to him a little bit later.

And uh so when I cut Ghostbusters, I was really already sort of leaving, so it could go either way.

But I gave it to client because I said, well, you could put it out fast, and he didn't like it.

I said, well, you don't have to like it.

They're gonna pay you all the money to promote it.

Just take it and pressing, fill it full of your album, fell down, full of your artists, and go in, which he was wonderfully happy about.

You know, Okay, I'm the greatest part of the gift ever.

Let me tell you something.

I'm a very fortunate guy.

Because after that I went to Geffing and we had that I don't think man should sleeping on that in the Dark album, which did well went gold in England.

They kind of dismissed the ball here, crossing it over pop the usually the way that we do all my records, because David Geffen was selling the company at the time, and I remember the numbers.

I think he gave me a million dollars up front and another million do the record, and he said, I'm getting out the music business.

I'm selling the whole company.

And if you go to MCA, you can keep all the money.

You have to pay it back.

I was like, I'm down for that.

Just keet the money off to pay it back, you know.

So that meant I went through MCA, but I kept my contract, but they owe me all the money and I'm free and clear, and I'm starting a zero.

Oh it's all the same.

I'm starting at zero.

So I said, that works.

The only problem is I got to m c A and even though I had to it on Bobby Brown and those guys, you know, I had another I was but yeah, I had another artist, and I had an artist Randy Hall signed there too, your artist or yeah, yeah, he was signing me and I signed him the MC and so now I'm going to MC after all of this a while that's going on, and they were like they wanted to have an A and R meeting and listen to what I was going to record and all that, and that just one't feeling that.

It's like kind of like making an actor audition.

After my contract said I could do whatever I want to do and you give me.

I think it was a million bucks up front, Just give me a million bucks when I start.

So I hadn't got my money right, and they were talking about, well, you can come on in.

I said, come in where come into word?

It is my million dollars.

And I had a bunch of more albums that they had to take, like several more albums, and so the conversation came up as too.

And my parents were sick at the time.

So I really want to spend more time Detroit.

It's hard for me to record.

And so that's why I say this worked out perfect time.

They decided to get rid of me, right, but they was this under Joe Busby or no he had just left Ernie Singleton and love both of those guys.

But they were gonna do it this way, which was fine.

So that the idea came, let's buy ral so believe it.

I thought my Lord thought he was crazy.

I said, they'll never do that.

You know, they'll just make me cut all the records and they'll go sell them and do whatever.

Well, you know what, they wrote me a big fat check for all the next several albums.

They don't have to do anything.

That is unheard of.

I mean, how do you deal with the changing times and when the advent of hip hop coming in?

And like, how are you dealing with this?

I've heard various Uh if you heard the infamous Michael Henderson rant, and there's a there's a famous Michael Henderson and wreking it down.

Yeah, a Japan rant where motherfucker down twelve we wreck it down where he's just, you know, kind of ranting over the changing times of music and how it's it might be leaving him behind, Like how are you.

Taking it at that moment?

You know what, It's an interesting thing.

I never really thought about getting left behind, and I never really thought about changing.

I think I do so many things in the music business.

There was a time I took the life along vacation, which is probably after that my check.

I just felt like you know, I moved to the mountains, I bought an airplane.

I started flying around the country.

You know, water so you just wanted to take it easy and chill.

I bought a really nice airplane that I could fly like twenty five.

I could fly to New York and back.

You know, some people take vacations of me.

I know, it's amazing, right, all right, you know Stevie Wonder.

Yeah, airplane, so I got a little yeah, making flames, so I got a little lot of not a lot of control.

But you know, I was like water ski everything that I dreamed about that.

I bought a house in the mountains and lived up eight thousand feet overlooking the lake and the fresh air, and ride with snowmobile ski.

Eighty days a year.

Just had a wonderful time of it.

You know, girls couldn't even find me because the didn't know where I lived.

I fly my airplane to the girl's house, have a date, and I split and go back home.

Nobody find life.

I was having a great time, and I did that for several years.

That's a whole Yeah.

If you got a plane, I had motorcycles, dirt bikes.

I mean, I just was having a great time.

This went on for a while, you know, until I met my future.

Wife finally made you decide to get married.

I don't know.

I met a girl like none other that I would rather watch TV with than go bang a couple of other ones.

That's real.

Yeah, it was just just a true man.

Yeah, it's real romance, I think, you know, and I feel that way today.

I want to say that wedding.

You have a record a song on the Mexico talk about that.

Was that inspired by her?

Or No, I was just in Mexico rights some songs, just food around you.

Wait you hear the next record.

I mean, I'm almost halfway done with it.

It's funky.

It's nineteen eighty three.

You know.

He said he don't write about his life.

He do people.

And then what I'm doing now this is I'm cutting me.

What am I cut?

This new record sounds like me Funkadelic Rick Jamee.

I mean, it's it's that era.

You know, it's back to my ear.

If the instruments were created much after that, I ain't gonna.

Have it on there.

I mean, it's our.

And you know what's interesting, I don't feel the least bit because I'm not really money motivated to make the record, so I don't feel the least bit.

I gotta listen to what's on the radio, try to go boo bah boo boo boo.

But if they go boo bah.

Boo boo boo ba, I just want to do it my way, you know, and just keep it true to what it is, you know, and people if somebody says, I don't know, maybe we sell it.

Maybe.

But I never really made music to try to make money.

I was always trying to make music because I love the music.

How do your kids feel about your career?

Like, do they know that you're the coolest dude walking the planet?

Or no?

Was it?

My kids thought nothing until they saw me get a star on Hollywood Boulevard, and really that got let me tell you something.

I never they don't move over anything, right.

But we came home from the star ceremony and my youngest son took the picture of somebody down and hung hist star up that I gave, you know, and I was like, really, I mean, y'all, really we got to y'all.

I mean we finally tapped you just a little bit.

Now.

I got a thirty year old twenty eight sixteen and eighteen.

So the younger ones, you know, the older ones, you know, they grew up with all this nonsense.

They ain't getting it.

But for some reason.

Yeah, but for some reason, even the older kids, the star on Hollywood Boulevard was a life changer.

That was the game changer.

Forget all the money, forget all that stuff.

They know they live in the house that the money bought.

They got that, but that's just their thing.

But for some reason, the star thing everybody got.

You know, even my wife.

We were driving home.

I said, I don't know about your other boyfriends, but I bet you they want to know Hollywood.

Let me tell you something.

I thought we were gonna have something going.

And she looked at me, she says, I'll let you slide with that one that put the blind you know, she let me.

She let it go.

She even let that one go.

So that was an interesting.

Thing with your kids, Like how do you because they grew up, you know, particularly the old ones, growing up growing up in that kind of goal, how do you teach them like the importance of work ethic and like what are they into?

I turned them out of the house and cut them off like years ago.

Well, you know they started.

You know.

The problem is the kids.

They think your money is their money less.

Yeah, yeah, you know.

So I kicked my kids out, and you know what, they all fell to the ground.

And now they're all making a lot of money, doing well, and so hopefully the younger ones will do the same thing.

And it's really painful to the fire.

I told my kids the old story.

It's got it's gonna hurt you, but guess what, you get the fuck out.

I came home one day and both of them were supposed to be looking for a job.

One and graduated college.

Won had dropped out, and they were at the swimming pool drinking margaritas and it was now I said, what with the job?

They said, we searched all day, all day.

It's twelve o'clock.

So finally put them out.

They were twenty two and twenty four.

Okay, it's reasonable.

You get lessons every you got.

It may have been twenty one and twenty because the oldest one had graduated, so maybe it's twenty three, and why you.

Give them an extra year?

The other one dropped out.

I said at the time, y'all can move together, share my spl.

Bro.

That's that's real.

Like, did you ever have a deadline?

Like when I was twenty, my dad was like, Yo, something gotta happened.

I wasn't lucky.

I got my record deal like within a year and a half, Like, but I got super lucky.

It was eighteen for me, and I knew.

Once I graduated high school, I was just like, yeah, I can't come back.

So then I went to college and even coming back for the summers was tough.

You know what I'm saying.

Able to pay something?

Yeah, totally.

I was working everything.

So then finally my senior year, me and my buddy, we got our own apartment and so that was then.

I also had a kid on the way.

I had my son on the way, so that kind of so I was.

I was hustling.

And then I graduated and then we signed that first deal.

We completed the list in like a couple of months as I graduated.

So what about you paid Bill and Steve?

Your parents were like, I get the funk out.

He's like Roger Dangerfield, don't stay home.

School are the last I have one last question, but I have to rewind back a little bit on because it means so much to me.

But I just have to say like your your theme The Prior's Place, Yo that that was one of my favorite shows ever, Like what was it like working with Richard Pryor?

And how did how did you?

Man?

That was wonderful.

I got that because I was dating the director's daughter.

I need one more like campfire story about rain the ladies leave the rest of that alone.

To the white pants and the peaches back.

So her dad asked me to come in and write the song, you know, and working with Richard Pryor was wonderful and it was like a dream come true.

Then they put me in the video and I'm bouncing the basketball.

Richard.

I'm like, oh man, this is as cool as you can get, right, And all of a sudden, I don't know where the ratings come out.

The thing is going great and it's us kids cartoons, I mean kids think So I'm thinking, wow, this is every everything, This is it.

I got it.

Then Richard probably just says I want to do no more, man like after several episodes and everybody's like, yeah, what happened.

I thought if we said the ratings, the ratings are, Richie just doesn't feel like doing it anymore, you know.

No, he just didn't feel just changed his mind.

It was the Black Sesame Street.

Yeah, he just changes his mind.

He came on eleven thirty ripe before a soldier.

Yeah, he just decided, I'm not gonna do no more.

Wow.

You know.

And then when that happens, you know what about us little guys?

You know, come on, you know it must be nice, It must be nice.

Just walk away right in the middle of it.

Don't care.

Let's go So okay any any I mean your new addition session.

Was okay, you're gonna like this.

So I wrote mister Telephone Man right alongside Jack and Jill and some other stuff all at the same time, right, and I thought, stupid song, mister teller.

I don't know why did I write that?

So I can it and I don't do anything with it, and we end up recording it on this kid on Geffen Records, Kid Junior Tucker, and they for some reason they throw his album with David Foster cuts some first Jay Graden that comes some They didn't like anything, and they gave it to me at discounted budget, and I actually finished the record for him, got it done, and then they just canned the thing and they didn't do nothing.

With it, but somehow the new addition heard it through this guy Dale Konwa Shimo used to work for Michael Jackson and they loved the song.

I didn't know that they had heard it.

So Gerald Buzzby called me up in Detroit while my parents were sick, and he says, I want you to fly to New York Boston and hear these kids singing, because you know, they want you to work with him on a song.

That's why he didn't say right it.

He said work with him on a song.

And my parents were sick.

I've been in Detroit for months, it's freezing cold, and he wants me to go to Boston.

It's January, not even not feeling it right.

So I tell Gerald, thanks of the man.

I don't think sothing man feeling So Gerald, being the smart guy, he was called back a month later.

A few weeks later, he says, how about we take the jet and go to the Bahamas and stay at the Trump thing there and go to the restaurant and we party.

I said that works to do that, So we fly down to the Bahamas, we rent motorcycles, we go in the casino, we eat at the same restaurant.

Donald trump stand over there.

We're sitting here and we party so hard.

We get to the kids concert.

They walk off the stage, right there's mister Parker.

How did you like our song?

I ain't even heard it yet.

Gerald looks at me.

I'm looking at him like, whoa, man, we're late.

We missed the whole thing, you know.

And we're like, oh, yeah, that was great.

Yeah.

And so I go back and I'm feeling bad now because I'm like, man, Gerald, man, my parents are sick, really not feeling this.

Write the song thing and go back to you know.

Just He says, oh, man, you ain't got to write the song.

He says, they were playing your song.

They just want you to re record it.

You know.

I was like, what song, mister telephone?

I said, how did they hear that?

He says, no, they worked out there, they know what.

They want you to cut it, just like those stuff.

So we got went to back in California and uh, the kids say, look, just cut it just like in fact, can we buy the old track?

I said, no, that blongs you can't buy it over chain.

But it's me playing all the instruments.

So I'll cut it again.

So I put all the instruments together.

He said, yeah, yeah, so that's me playing.

I play the drums and over dub.

I'm like Steve.

I put the drums on last, you know, So I played the bass and all the rest.

Well that's how the master taught me.

I'm just doing it like he did it.

So I put all the stuff on.

We get the track done.

We get to singing on Ralph sings the verse.

It sounds great.

Nobody can sing the chorus, and said Bobby because he's he didn't want He said, I don't sing.

I rap right.

I said, well you got to sing because ain't nobody else singing it.

So he's yelling and screaming up how, I said.

We get him on up high.

Later he tells me, you know, I saw him a few weeks ago.

He told me.

He says, well, Ray Parker Junior said I can sing someth fuck it, I quit the band said, I do my own album.

I said, boy, that was a confidence building Yeah, I'm gone, you know, but uh it was interesting.

Uh they cut, we cut the record, turned it in and they were a little out of tune on some parts, and was worked to get the vocals done.

So Jero Buzzby looks at me.

He says, man, can you cut four or five more songs?

You know?

I said, man, I can't do that.

I'm doing this.

He says, well, get your boys, Allie, and wasn't name of them to do it.

He says, they can ghost it for you.

He says, you got my permission.

So I go to my boys.

I said, man, y'all, y'all want to cut the stuff.

I got a pockets full of cash burn here, you know, do this.

We don't want to do that.

We don't want to do it.

I said, yep, but we don't want to.

Nobody want to do it.

Why I just didn't want to do it.

No, I couldn't get all I mean people needed integrity.

Yeah yeah, too much integrity or too much poor judgment.

So nobody would take the money to do it.

So that's how I ended up with just the one song.

I turned the song in and believe or not, that's the same week when they called me for Ghostbusters.

So when Gary Lamel called me from Ghostbusters, you know, I had been to Spargo's and I was sitting.

With the lady right there, Claire.

We were looking at that read I mean black poster with it just had to circle on it something like that.

I said, what is that?

And I said, I got a phone call from my friend about that, and what Gary was saying it was, you know, spent a couple of days.

I paid it right.

So I says, Man, I'm not doing this song.

I'm going back to Detroit.

He says.

He says, you're not doing music.

He says, what are you doing here?

Now?

Says I'm doing a new edition.

He said, were doing doing music?

Then what are you talking about?

My money ain't good for their you know.

So that's how he talked me into doing this.

I was already in town doing a new edition.

So he said, stay two more days.

Fifty grand.

Ye.

So that year I had missed the telephone Man and Ghostbusters came out the same year.

Man, Game Changers, Game Changers.

Yeah, Ray Parker Jr.

Thank you, Thank you, Man, thank you.

One of the new edition.

Ray Parker almost didn't happen, just like Ghostbusters almost didn't happen, just like Jack and Jill almost didn't happen.

Man, I don't know what lesson like.

There's so many I don't know if it's that I should start dating all the daughters of all the mine is I'm kicking my kids out the house.

Yeah, you really have to know that information.

You're like exactly what I'm like, what was the day?

I mean, that's the lesson because three days after yet to roll right Ghostbusters?

So yeah, yea myself.

They got to go.

They stay numbered already.

Oh yeah, that's what you're taking for this, Ray Parkers.

Yeah, yeah, they gotta get out.

They gotta go.

I mean once they they're not legal yet, they're not.

At fifteen and ten.

But I'm basically saying seven three to seven years fifteen, gotta get out.

Oh yeah, yeah, oh yeah really, oh yes, I mean it was like that for me.

You know what I'm saying.

I did right.

I ended up in the room with you motherfuckers.

So I see something a child has to suffer to make it in life.

I don't.

Is there thing you gotta suffer?

I just you know what, man, It's it's tough because like we were talking about this to Cardoon Knight, like, you know, looking at what was it?

It was you god right, saying like his kids are like super nerds.

Nerds so a lot of ways like hip hop and the kids have entertainers.

Hip hop has afforded the kids way better lives than the fathers and mothers, you know what I'm saying.

So that's the good thing.

But then in some aspects you kind of lose that thing that made your dad you know, right or whatever, hunger drive, whatever, So you kind of gotta walk that line.

It's like, Okay, do I want to give my kids everything that I didn't have or do I want to make them live like Antoine Fisher.

So I'm just kind of like, I mean, not like not white.

It here, I'm still strong.

Oh nigga, I don't know who will people be?

So nah?

I mean, so that's that's my that is my conflict because I want to get in the things.

I mean, I don't want my kids to like grow up like in the crackhouse and ship like I experienced.

But at the same time, I don't want them, you know, to just be soft and mark.

God damn job.

Yeah no.

So so that was my list from break kick your kids out there.

And children.

I'm sorry, I just wanted to radio show to nerd out a little bit.

I didn't want this to be the moment of your life changing.

Uh so, Bill, you seem to agree about kicking my kids out of the house.

You would kick one daughter out with do you know it like tomorrow?

No, I'm playing, uh, but you're not.

I'm not.

I don't you know.

I haven't given much thought to kicking my kids out of the house.

I feel like a few years ahead of me.

So, yeah, your kids, your daughters are much young.

So I mean there are days late, Jordans.

There's two kids, and I'm paid Bill's life, and one might be testing his patience just a little bit more than the other one.

Everybody's patients, not just me.

But do you feel I mean, is it too late?

She's only three, right, she's four?

Is it too late to do what?

Yeah?

Give her back?

Yes, it's too late for that.

I have about three friends who thought.

One one of them infamously said, you know, he had a son and a daughter and he says, well, you know, I'm gonna save my baill money up for my son to college tuition up for her.

And now they're older, it's the complete opposite.

The angel is now a nightmare.

I heard that they switch and right, so as who knows, like the apple of your eye, might you know it might be bail money time.

I mean, I hope.

You about girls to keep him off the poles.

The only thing you need to do.

I've heard that, all right.

So Steve drops droptsman, science man, would you learn?

Man?

I thought some of the interesting things he was talking about was the Stevie Wonder playing drums on his stuff last.

Yeah, that is that all?

I mean, that's that makes a lot of sense.

And it's just so it's just mind blowing.

How does it make no click?

So he's playing to what well?

Because Steve is one of the most adventurous uh.

High hat players all time, that just makes a lot of sense that the fluctuation of his drumming is because he does it last.

And I try that same.

I'm gonna cut a song on this album's album.

Every That's what I was thinking the whole time.

You know, I gotta try this.

I love that in two weeks.

Let's listen.

Listen, listen.

That's something cool.

And and also Stevie Wonder's apparent competitiveness with with Ray Parker and trying to that on the Sha Ka Khan thing and all that, and then the Hugelism skills as well, and that Barry White didn't like overdubs and he was he was doing all that.

No, but in general, we're choosing people here that seem to know everybody, who have seemed to have done everything, and it's like it's just so much data going, you know, we need to choose somebody who just did like a one hit wonder.

So, lie, what did you learn besides the fact that you might possibly want Ray Parker Junior to be your baby dad, just at least.

The soundtrack to you Know Me and My Baby.

You know what I learned?

And I learned this every week on this show.

Excuse me, not jokes, but I learned you gotta pay attention.

And it's funny because y'all made the joke about having a one hit Wonder on the show, and I'm like, you know, a lot of people listening might think that Ray Parker Jr.

Was a one hit one.

So it just goes to show that you and not to plug our own show, but you need to pay attention to Quest Love Supreme because you will find out some ship that you never knew.

And then I think at the same time, you should have your phone open on Google and discogs or whatever else you need to do.

So that you can be, you know, more musically educated person.

Bill.

Yeah, what's up?

What did I learn?

I learned that it's a good idea to maintain relationships because you will never know when you will need certain people again.

Any other last words of Boss Bill like as far as the relationships maintained relationships, Ray Parker Jr.

Is still one of the coolest dudes on the planet.

Still he talks like, right, You'll think Drake's going to be that cool when he's sixty something, isn't there just rerailised.

We forgot to ask him Ray Parker, what it was like to uh, to be Land of cal.

Good night, ladies and gentlemen.

There is another episode of Quest Loves Supreme.

Boss Bill.

Tune in next week.

It wasn't Lando Covers, It wasn't that wasn't him, Sugar Steve, I'm bay Bill Fante Edit Scott Spread Wait, yeah, yeah, Scott Spurn.

Think about the baby.

This is a Quest Love come next week again at one pm Eastern Eastern Standard times, ten am Specific Standard time.

And uh, we hope you still are listening Quest Love Supreme Pandora, Thank you.

Quest Love Supreme is production of iHeartRadio.

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