David Matthews

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

Ladies and gentleman, sitting in front of you is David Matthews, all the way from New York. Well, not born and raised in New York, but this was the guy I was telling you about in my brief introduction. The composer, arranger, funk master, bebop master, all-around amazing individual who we’ll be speaking to today about music, dating way back, and how it turns around and is made new again. Now, this is a special treat for me because I didn’t think I would ever be interviewing this man. I’ve interviewed so many people that formed the foundations of funk, as it were. Because that’s a big part of what I do, and the one guy I was looking to talk to was this man, the guy in the midst of James Brown’s revolution. A kind of unsung hero in my mind, because he was the guy whose name I was reading on some of my favorite records, as the arranger, musical director sometimes, if I saw a concert flyer or something. The guy who made an album called The Grodeck Whipperjenny in 1970, which was a psychedelic opus of the highest caliber. Who is this man? Where is David Matthews, not Dave Matthews of the Dave Matthews Band, but David Matthews? In an online interview I gave to some obscure website somewhere in Australia, they said, “Who do you want to interview?” I said, “David Matthews, the guy who did The Grodeck Whipperjenny for James Brown in 1970, an all around funky guy who we all need to know more about.” I haven’t seen any written text on the guy. Well, he contacted me because he went online and searched for himself. [laughter / applause] You can imagine how I felt! And he signed it “David” in parentheses “to differentiate myself from the other guy.” But I think that all of us are here to see him. I’m very excited to do this. We started out in our first conversation – I flew to New York to interview him – talking about his upbringing in Kentucky.

DAVID MATTHEWS

Yep.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

Now, I don’t know how many of you are familiar with Kentucky. A state that I guess you could call...

DAVID MATTHEWS

It’s famous for chicken. [laughter]

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

And whisky.

DAVID MATTHEWS

And whisky, yeah.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

You could call it a Southern state couldn’t you?

DAVID MATTHEWS

It’s technically above the Mason-Dixon line. During the war it was considered a border state. And in fact, my grandmother’s family was on the Southern side. My grandfather’s family was on the Northern side. So Kentucky was kind of a battleground during that time, during the civil war. As it was, Kentucky comes from an Indian word that means “dark and bloody ground.” It was a fighting ground for Indians before we got there. During the Civil War it was the same thing. So, it’s not really a Southern state. But when I first moved to New York, they thought I spoke with a Southern accent.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

Sparsely-populated state, nonetheless.

DAVID MATTHEWS

Mostly rural, except for two large towns.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

And where were you born?

DAVID MATTHEWS

I was born in a town called Sonora, which at that time, maybe still has about 300 people. I only lived there for a few months before – my father was a Methodist minister and we moved around a lot in the early days. So I stayed in. Then I left Sonora and lived in a bunch of little towns that nobody has heard of.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

See, this amazes me. You’ve heard of people like you who’ve gone on to great fame in larger cities, having a start in a small town like that. Three-hundred people. And it always amazes me, the mixture of talent and dumb luck that’ll get you out of a town like Sonora, Kentucky.

DAVID MATTHEWS

Right. And in fact, my entire career is based on a combination of talent and dumb luck. This is true.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

Now, how did you get your beginnings in music? Did you come from a musical family?

DAVID MATTHEWS

Well, my mother was a piano player. She’d majored in piano in college. She wanted to become a concert pianist, but then she married my father and became a preacher’s wife. She played piano and organ in church every Sunday. There was always a piano in my house. My mother tells me that even when I was three years old, I was fascinated by the sounds, I would plunk around. So I still plunk around, but a little better now.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

So you started on the piano? That was your first instrument?

DAVID MATTHEWS

Yeah. Well, I started fooling around on it. There wasn’t any actual study. I just fooled around and fooled around, until 40 years later, I could play it a little bit.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

When we first met, you had drawn attention to the fact that your right hand isn’t fully developed.

DAVID MATTHEWS

It’s not fully developed. I had a birth defect, and my entire right side didn’t develop as much as a normal human body.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

So playing the piano with an underdeveloped right side must have been quite difficult.

DAVID MATTHEWS

As a kid I didn’t know. I just played it with my left hand. And I still do.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

All those amazing solos we’ve heard have been with your left hand?

DAVID MATTHEWS

Ninety percent, yes.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

So, with your mother being a pianist, knowing how difficult it was going to be to learn with an underdeveloped right side. Did she encourage you to play the piano?

DAVID MATTHEWS

She, in fact, gave me one piano lesson. I must have been 10 or 12 years old. I didn’t practice. I couldn’t, actually. So then she told me that, “Since you don’t practice, I’m not going to give you another lesson.” Forty years later, my aunt told me that wasn’t quite the truth. She recognized that I could never be a piano player, she didn’t want me to be heartbroken when I was older. She didn’t encourage me to play the piano at all. I just needed to.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

So, if you weren’t playing the piano, what instrument were you playing?

DAVID MATTHEWS

Well, starting in fourth grade, I started taking trumpet lessons in the public school music system. And later on, I switched to French horn, which is in fact a left handed instrument.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

Explain to me the French horn. How do you play it?

DAVID MATTHEWS

Well, it’s circling around like a horn. And you stick your hand in the bell, which controls the pitch and the sound. And you finger it with your left hand.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

So perfect then.

DAVID MATTHEWS

It was perfect for me. Plus I was never a particularly good trumpet player. My teacher said that I should switch to French horn because there were thousands of trumpet players and every school needed French horn players and maybe I could get a scholarship to college. Which I did.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

Where did you end up going to college?

DAVID MATTHEWS

I went to the College Conservatory of Music of Cincinnati.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

Now at this time, moving to Cincinnati in Ohio, a Northern state, was this the biggest city that you’d lived in?

DAVID MATTHEWS

Yes. I went to high school in Louisville, which I guess at that time had about a half a million people. Cincinnati had a million, so this was the big city.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

By this time, what music were you into? I’m assuming this is the late ’50s, early ’60s?

DAVID MATTHEWS

I started college in 1960. In the late ’50s I heard a Chet Baker record. My mother went off to Louisville and bought me a Chet Baker record. And I wore it out. I tried to play the solos on trumpet. And then later on I heard Dave Brubeck. So I was into jazz early on, from the late ’50s.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

So you went to the conservatory, and you were studying jazz? What were you studying?

DAVID MATTHEWS

No, I was studying classical composition. The reason I wanted to study composition was because my high school teacher, jazz and classical teacher, had explained to me that to be a truly creative, improvising jazz musician, you were in fact, spontaneously composing. So I said, “Well, if that’s what I’m doing, I’ve got to know more about how to do this.” For that reason I majored in composition in school, but it was more because I wanted to be more creative and to be a better jazz musician.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

So, how did you return to the piano? Obviously you were playing French horn, but...

DAVID MATTHEWS

I never stopped playing piano. I just fooled around with it and fooled around with it, and finally I got one of those stage band arrangements that were published. And the first time I saw these hip chords with 9ths in them and 13ths in them, those type of things, I was fascinated by those sounds. So I never stopped playing piano. I just never studied it, formally.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

Gotcha. And while you were in college, did you lead any kind of jazz ensemble or formal group?

DAVID MATTHEWS

From the very beginning. We had smaller groups, and then I had a big band, which played all the way through the whole time I was in college. The conservatory ethic, or whatever you want to call it, is pretty snobby about classical music. We would have rehearsals on the concert hall stage where they gave the recitals and so on and so forth. And finally, one of the teachers at the school said, “We don’t want to have a jazz band rehearsing on that stage because we have too many great musicians here to dirty it with a jazz band.” What she didn’t realize was that most of the better musicians in school were in that jazz band. [laughter]

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

And you must have been one of the great musicians at the school at that time?

DAVID MATTHEWS

Well, yes. I don’t want to be immodest, but yes I was. [laughter / applause]

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

You got to like his attitude. And rightfully so, because I heard the acetate demo that his group recorded, when you were what, sophomores in college?

DAVID MATTHEWS

Maybe I was a junior, you know?

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

A demo, recorded back in the day, like people do nowadays with dubplates or CD-Rs. Dubplates, if you’re a dinosaur like me. You recorded a demo to acetate, which you’ve still kept, and which I listened to when I visited with David in New York. Man, amazing work for a group recording in a room with one microphone.

DAVID MATTHEWS

Nowadays, I’m shocked to listen to it and hear how good it’s sounding. Actually, one of my friends, a bass player, found out about a Dutch student organization that was sponsoring students traveling from America to Europe in the summer time. That was what students did in the ’60s. You’d go to Europe for the summer. So we wanted to get on this boat, it was a free trip to Europe. So we made this demo. Later on, I ended up coming over here about three different times during my college days. And the Dutch people in charge of it said it was the best demo they’d ever received from any group that had made those trips. For a bunch of college kids, it did sound pretty good.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

What did you do after you got out of college? Did you start playing professionally?

DAVID MATTHEWS

Well, I was playing professionally when I was in college. I paid for most of my college, there was no scholarship, I paid for it by playing little jazz gigs, and for dances and that kind of thing. As soon as I graduated, I had come to Europe three different times on these student trips and I wanted to live in Europe. So on the third trip, I had met some booking agents that were putting entertainment into the American military bases over here. I put together this six-piece band and we came over and I lived in Europe for almost two years, right after I graduated.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

This is what, ’65, ’66?

DAVID MATTHEWS

Actually, ’66 was the year I came over here to live.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

Now, around 1966 is when we start noticing the popular rhythm in American music, changing drastically. Going from there being popular songs that are using jazz swing rhythms to more of a pervasive R&B feel.

DAVID MATTHEWS

Yes, and not only that, the Beatles had dominated everything around those years.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

With a 4/4 rock & roll beat.

DAVID MATTHEWS

Yes.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

Now, the one person I’ve got to ask you about, because your work with him is going to go on to be so seminal, is James Brown. By 1966, he’s recording really radical songs, when you think about them in their historical context. Like “I Got You (I Feel Good).” Did you know these songs?

DAVID MATTHEWS

I didn’t really. Jazz musicians were somewhat insular in their tastes. And I wasn’t paying much attention to popular music. But when I was working, I had this black girl singer in my band, and she knew these James Brown songs. And she taught them to me and to the band. So she’d sing the horn licks and the bass licks, and we learned “I Feel Good” and those songs and played them in Europe. But I didn’t really quite know who James Brown was yet.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

Really?

DAVID MATTHEWS

Yeah.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

Amazing.

DAVID MATTHEWS

I mean, I was into Miles Davis, you know. [laughter]

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

So, when did you go back to the States?

DAVID MATTHEWS

Beginning of ’68.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Where were you living in Europe?

DAVID MATTHEWS

I lived in Bitburg for two months. Do you know Bitburg? They have the best beer in the world. [laughter] I lived in Naples for about three months. I lived in... what’s the gateway to Greece? The Italian town, called the gateway to Greece?

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Brindisi.

DAVID MATTHEWS

Brindisi. I lived in Brindisi. Stuttgart. And some other little towns, I can’t really remember now.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

And back from there to Cincinnati?

DAVID MATTHEWS

Yes. I felt guilty. I hadn’t written or telephoned my parents after a year and a half. I thought, “I’ve got a little bit of money saved up. I’ll go back and see family and friends.” I left money in the bank in Germany. I lived in Wiesbaden for six months, I’d guess. And I was going to come back. But somehow I got some good work, playing with a really terrific jazz band in Cincinnati, and stayed.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

What was the name of the band?

DAVID MATTHEWS

The name of the band was the Sound Museum.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

And this is 1968. Are you guys playing straight-ahead jazz, like we were talking about? Bop? Or are you playing fusion stuff?

DAVID MATTHEWS

We were playing everything. There was an old blues singer who was the greeter at this club we were playing in. We played the blues with him. The leader was a terrific bebop tenor player, we played bebop with him. We played “out.” This was the time period of ”out” – avantgarde stuff. We played everything. It all had an exciting feeling about it. So the place was jammed every night. So for a year, we played there six nights a week. It was wonderful.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

Now this is a time when a man named Bud Hobgood hears about you, right?

DAVID MATTHEWS

Mmm, hmm.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

Can you tell everybody who Bud Hobgood is?

DAVID MATTHEWS

Well, anybody who was into music in Cincinnati at that time knew about us. We were the hot band. Bud Hobgood, his title was the “coordinating producer for James Brown productions.” The company that was involved with rhythm & blues music in America at that time, probably the biggest company in America, was King Records. And it was located in Cincinnati. In fact, it was the only company, I’m told, that had everything including the accounting department, the art department, the A&R department, the pressing plant. Everything was there in Cincinnati in this complex of buildings. And Bud Hobgood was the guy, you could call him an A&R man. But he was the co-ordinating producer. So he knew about us. And one day James was in town, and he brought James over to hear us. There’s the dumb luck.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

Yeah, talk about dumb luck. Because this is not the James Brown, like “Living in America” and all that stuff that might have been contemporary when people in this room were growing up. This is the James Brown that was really at the forefront of every kind of music. I mean, everybody in the world was checking out James Brown at thistime.

DAVID MATTHEWS

Absolutely. I think Time magazine are quoted as saying about him “the most powerful black man in America” at that time.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

And he comes to check you guys doing your weird thing out in Cincinnati.

DAVID MATTHEWS

Right.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

Was he impressed?

DAVID MATTHEWS

He certainly seemed to be. And he said he wanted to record us, which of course made us ecstatic. Then later on, the leader of the Sound Museum called for us to make an appointment to go and make our record. And Bud Hobgood said, “Well, you guys sounded really great in the club, but that doesn’t necessarily translate into a recording. Could you come over and make a demo just to see what you sound like on tape?” Great. So we go over to make our demo. Shall I continue?

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

Well, maybe we should just break, interject it. At this point, James Brown was the man who could put a stamp on your record, “A James Brown Production.” And it would move, or you would get a deal. I mean, this is a guy that wasn’t necessarily limiting himself to the R&B idiom. He was picking up groups wherever he was and putting them out. He put out a jazz trio from Cincinnati called the Dee Felice Trio, who did an amazing mixture of Brazilian music and straight-ahead jazz. He put out a Cincinnati DJ named Good Ol’ Bob who played accordion music. I mean, alongside heavy, heavy funk stuff of course, and beautiful r&b. So hear he is commissioning you guys to do a demo. It sounds weird that the man James Brown, who did “Cold Sweat,” would be having you guys in there. But it’s a pretty big deal.

DAVID MATTHEWS

It was. And I was too dumb to know it. I had no concept of how important this was to me, or how big he was at that time. I was just a bebopper who liked the Beatles and all music, and here we were, hopefully we’re going to make a record.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

So, you go into the studio, King Studio.

DAVID MATTHEWS

So we go over there. And it turns out that for some reason, the studio wasn’t available, they couldn’t make our demo at that time. Now here’s the dumb luck. Just as I’m standing there with the band, James calls up Bud Hobgood and says, “Get me an arranger.” Here I am, an arranger, standing right there. So everybody in the band says, “Dave’s a wonderful arranger.” And Hobgood says, “Well, this isn’t jazz, this is funk.” And everybody says, “Don’t worry, he can do anything.” So he commissioned me to write six arrangements for him, for various tunes, which I did.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

Now at that point, we’re talking about you being ignorant of James Brown’s music just a few years prior. Did you know his music any better now?

DAVID MATTHEWS

At that time, no! [laughter]

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

Yet you’re going to go in there and arrange music for the man who’s revolutionizing popular music.

DAVID MATTHEWS

I didn’t realize he was revolutionizing popular music. I was just where we were, and I had this opportunity, and I didn’t know how big he was or how important he was. And I really didn’t know what to do. I called up an older friend of mine who was an arranger and I said, “What I am supposed to do?” He said, “Oh, just write some double-time licks there and they’ll learn it.” Which I tried to.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

So you actually did the arrangements?

DAVID MATTHEWS

Yes, I arranged six tunes. And they sounded good to me. James wasn’t there. We put the tracks down and about a week later James came to hear the stuff. What I’m about to tell you is locked on my brain. I’ll never forget in my entire life what happened. He comes in. James is not a tall guy, he’s a smaller guy. But the energy, the power he expresses, it just fills up the room. So here he comes in, there’s four or five flunkies behind him. And he comes in, and he’s just like, he’s the center of everything. So he comes in, he’s got this big smile on his face, he’s like, “Great, let me hear it.” So the engineer plays the first track. And after about ten seconds, the smile drops a little bit. “Let me hear the next one.” He plays him the next one for about ten seconds, and the smile drops some more. Finally he’s listened to the first eight seconds of all six of ’em, and there’s no smile there, just big creases. “This ain’t hip, this is straight.” And I’m thinking, “Oh god, there goes my career.” [laughter] So, here’s some more dumb luck. The engineer says, “Mr. Brown” – in the company of James, everybody was called “mister,” he says it’s a matter of respect. At General Motors, you don’t call him Joe, you call him Mr. Whoever. So he says, “Mr. Brown, in the middle of that third tune, there’s something that I think you should hear.” So he goes to the middle track and he plays the hippest stuff that I wrote. Some really good horn licks. And the smile comes back. He says, “That’s it! But I’ve got to tell you something. On a record, if you don’t put the hip stuff at the beginning, they might not even get far enough to listen to it. So you’ve got to put the hip stuff at the beginning.” I’ve never forgotten that in my whole life either. Anyway, because that engineer pointed out the hip stuff, that’s how I got the gig.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

Do you remember what it was that you had arranged? The song?

DAVID MATTHEWS

No, I don’t. No. But I do know, those hip licks, I put them at the beginning when I rearranged everything. And one of the tunes was “Any Day Now,” which I played for you. That was the first arrangement I had done for James that actually went onto a record and was released. He thought for several weeks about whether it should be a single or not. I had combined my own kind of feeling with some of the pop stuff that was happening with some of his thing and put it all together. Fortunately, for me it was a really good arrangement at the right time. They finally decided that it wasn’t enough of him to be a single. So they did put it on an album.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

It’s on a really famous album in fact, the It’s a Mother album. It’s a really famous record. So your first commission for James Brown makes it onto a record.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Mr. Matthews...

DAVID MATTHEWS

Please call me Dave.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Dave, OK. When they talk about James Brown, and soul music in general from the late ’60s, considering arrangements, we’re talking about a little revolution. Because arrangements for soul music and pop music have changed drastically by that time. Something very interesting happened, the birth of what we call funk grooves. James Brown’s music is known as having a very intricate relationship between drums, particularly bass because you have independent basslines that move all the time, when earlier soul music has simpler bass lines. [sings a bass pattern] And in James Brown you have [sings more complex pattern]. It goes together with the horn section. That moves all the time, too. What was it to work like this?

DAVID MATTHEWS

First of all, yes, James’s stuff was much more complicated than any soul music at that time had been. On the other hand, the complexity is not what you’ve heard. You’ve heard the groove. There’s a term that was used in the 15 or 16 hundreds in European music called “hackett.” Does anybody know that word? Anyway, what that was, one instrument would play one short phrase and another instrument would play another one and it would all fit together. Now in the typical James Brown arrangement of the band, the horn section would be one element, each of the guitars, the lead guitar specifically, would be another one. The bass would be another one. And those three elements would fit together as one pattern. Then the drums would tie everything together. So that’s the form that James came up with. And as I’ve thought about it over the years, if you listen to Latin music of that time, there’s a lot of similarities. I once heard James say that the Latin guys somewhat blew it, because they didn’t understand about the “one.” They were always off the “one.” And so he took those elements of Latin, Cuban music and put the big, strong “one” in front of it, and came up with his own thing which we now call funk.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

But in James Brown’s music, when I listen to it, I can sense a little bit of counterpoint.

DAVID MATTHEWS

It’s all counterpoint.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Did you have to write the basslines?

DAVID MATTHEWS

Yes. The basslines are the most controlled... Well, all the elements of James’ music are controlled. But most of his arrangements, he thought up the bassline himself and sang it to the bass player. And he would repeat it over and over again. And then he would think up the guitar part, and sing it to the guitar player. And the same with the horn section. Whoever was the leader – he would sing the horn lick, and then they would work out, “You got the 3rd, you got the 5th.” But it is counterpoint. And it is all totally controlled. And as a matter of fact, from then on, when I was a studio arranger in New York, sometimes the only thing I ever wrote was the bassline. And everything was built around the bassline. So you’re absolutely right about that.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

So when you’re talking about that late ’60s time, funk goes from being a term that’s used to describe any kind of music, to being a music itself. Funk music, a la James Brown. And people who innovated after him, like Sly & the Family Stone and the Meters, early Kool & the Gang. We’re talking about a guy here who had some of the most amazing musicians all working together, and who all knew each other quite well, right? I mean, the drummers would have been Clyde Stubblefield and [John] “Jabo” Starks, the bass player would probably have been Bernard Odum, right?

DAVID MATTHEWS

I don’t remember him.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

He would have been the guy that played on “Cold Sweat,” and...

DAVID MATTHEWS

He had gone before the time I got there.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

So who would have been there with you?

DAVID MATTHEWS

First, “Sweet” Charles Sherrell was there. And of course, later Bootsy Collins.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

And how about guitar players, like Jimmy Nolen?

DAVID MATTHEWS

Jimmy Nolen was there when I first got there. And then a guy named “Chicken”?

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

Chicken, yeah, that would have been a bit later on guitar. And horn players like Maceo Parker and Saint Clair Pinckney, Pee Wee Ellis. These are amazing musicians who got down and created funk’s first anthem, as it were, “Cold Sweat.”

DAVID MATTHEWS

Yeah.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

Now, you were telling me a story about how James would compose songs, and maybe it’s interesting. Because, the question he brought up is about how these songs were written. I mean, these guys are musicians who could play any kind of music, but excelled in playing a groove for 15, 16 minutes straight, when they were going to go record. As is evidenced now by extended versions of songs like “Escapism,” which was released as a single in 1970. I think you have writers credit bestowed upon you.

DAVID MATTHEWS

Bestowed upon me...

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

By James Brown.

DAVID MATTHEWS

I don’t think I wrote a note of it. I mean, James used to give and take.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

I mean, this is a 19-minute song, which was then edited down to a two-part single, where they grabbed the first two minutes, and then 13 minutes into the song. Same tempo, same groove. These are top musicians but how would they write these songs? How would these songs be actually composed?

DAVID MATTHEWS

I know what you’re talking about. As I look back over it, it seems like James only really had four or five grooves. They all had their own unique character, and I saw this happen over and over again. He would say, “OK, let’s play ‘Cold Sweat,’ and they would start playing “Cold Sweat.” In the recording studio, this would happen. And then he would go to the bass player, and say, “Stop.” Everybody else kept playing. Then he would make up another bassline – it had the same groove, same feeling, but it was totally different notes, different figures. Then he would go over to the guitar player and say, “No, don’t play that,” and sing him another thing. “Cold Sweat” kept going. By the time he was finished, it was something totally different, but it had that “Cold Sweat” groove to it. And I saw this happen over and over again. You can name four or five tunes, like... [sings melody] What’s that tune? “Mother Popcorn.” “Mother Popcorn” is basically “Cold Sweat,” with all the figures changed.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

And you were there to see all this.

DAVID MATTHEWS

I was watching it. I learned tremendously from watching that.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

Now, as a jazz arranger, and the “Any Day Now” arrangement he did for James first – it’s quite complex when you listen to it, in the context of the rest of the record. As a jazz arranger, how do you take someone like James Brown, who is now having his entire horn section repeat three notes for 15 minutes?

DAVID MATTHEWS

Well, it’s two different things. “Any Day Now” is a song. It has a certain number of bars. It has a form to it. So you can’t treat “Any Day Now” or a song in the same way you treat a one-chord groove like “Cold Sweat.” So it’s two totally different situations. In terms of “Any Day Now,” at the chorus, the most exciting part, I tried to do James’s kind of thing on it, but it only lasted eight bars, and then we went on to the other section of the song.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

Were you actually a part of James’s organization or were you freelance musician just associated with him because of your residency in Cincinnati?

DAVID MATTHEWS

Well, I was never legally an employee. I was always a freelance guy, he would call me and I’d show up, and he called me often enough that I made a living off it. I guess, legally, I was not a part of the organization.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

And did you go on the road with James Brown, too?

DAVID MATTHEWS

Kind of. After I’d been working as an arranger with James in Cincinnati for about six months, first of all in those days, the term for “messing up” was “blow.” Somebody “blew it” or somebody “is blowing it.” So one day Bud Hobgood came to me and said, “Something weird is going on with Pee Wee.” Beacause the band had recorded something in Miami or wherever and they sent the tapes back to Cincinnati. And on the vamp on side two, James was chanting, “Everybody knows that Pee Wee blows.” So we said, “Uh oh, something’s going on with Pee Wee.” A couple of weeks later, he fired Pee Wee. Pee Wee’s a great guy and he’s a friend of mine. But it was kind of good for me, now I was the main arranger. So, four or five months after that, James told me, “Write down the entire show.” I went to Cherry Hill, New Jersey to this Latin casino, and I stood behind each guy in the band for a week. I stood behind Clyde Stubblefield, looked at his hands, looked at his feet, wrote down the drum patterns. I stood right next to “Sweet” Charles and wrote down every note that he was playing. I wrote down the entire show and scored it for a 17-piece big band. I don’t know if James was preparing for something or what, but one day – James was known for doing this – one day, he cut the band’s salary. He got pissed off and said, “OK, everybody is getting docked 15 bucks a week.” By then, Maceo and those guys were tired of it. So they just quit. “Nope, we’re not doing it,” they quit. And they formed their own band called Maceo & All the King’s Men, which made a couple of records. Basically, James had such power with the black DJs that he just squashed their record. They just couldn’t do it. Anyway, so they all quit, James calls back to Cincinnati to Bud Hobgood and says, “The band quit, send me a band.” [laughter] Well, it just turns out at that time that Bootsy Collins was 19 years old, and he and his brother and some friends had this little funk band. But we had been using them on studio recordings in Cincinnati.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

Now, this is Bootsy Collins, previous to the star glasses and the glamor. A 19-year-old with an Afro, taking acid.

DAVID MATTHEWS

This was Bootsy Collins. I don’t know if he was into acid quite yet.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

Hanging out with his brother in a local band called the Houseguests in Cincinnati, recording records and doing sessions for people like Arthur Prysock.

DAVID MATTHEWS

Whatever they needed for a song, rhythm section, these guys were terrific. And I recorded several things for Arthur Prysock.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

With Bootsy Collins and his brother.

DAVID MATTHEWS

They were just kids. Catfish, he was 23, 24. Bootsy was just a kid. So Hobgood rounded them up, shipped them off to South Carolina. The story I heard was they just got there barely in time to do a show, they didn’t have uniforms, they didn’t have any rehearsal, they just went on stage and James Brown made up a show and they got through it, and then they rehearsed and rehearsed. But, don’t tell anybody I said this, the rhythm section was great, but the horn players they got... hmmm... [laughter]

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Where were you?

DAVID MATTHEWS

I wasn’t involved yet. There were two guys, they could dance their asses off, they could swirl the trumpets around. They were great, but they weren’t very good trumpet players. And James recognized that in small towns in South Carolina or somewhere, he could get away with not having a great horn section. But he was known for having the hottest horn section in soul at the time. Fortunately, he’d already had me write out the entire show. So whenever we went to a big town – New York or Toronto or Chicago – he’d have me go out and pick up a local horn section to augment the show. So in terms of being on the road with them, whenever there was a big town, I’d fly out there and rehearse the local band and do the show and then fly back home. Once I rode the bus from Tulsa to Dallas or something. Those guys did it every night! But I didn’t have to go through that kind of torture. So I was kind of on the road with him but not really.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

Fred Wesley, later in his autobiography, talks about how he pretty much learned everything that he needed to know what to with James and the band by watching you.

DAVID MATTHEWS

Fred was a natural talent but wasn’t trained as an arranger. So some of the technical aspects – he watched how I did it, writing out the whole thing in terms of when James said, “Arrange such and such a song.” I really like Fred, he’s a good friend. Very quickly he became as good an arranger as he needed to be.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

You guys wanna hear a James Brown song that David arranged?

[Audience cries of “yeah!”]

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

I wish I had one I could play you, a really exquisite song called “The Land Of Milk and Honey” by Vicki Anderson, which is quite an amazing funk song recorded in Cincinnati with an entire string section, all of these stops and starts that were sampled by Large Professor on a classic rap song called “Live at the Barbecue,” which you guys might know is Nas’s first record. But we can play you another one, which was actually recorded a bit later in New York, called “There It Is.”

(music: James Brown – “There It Is”)

AUDIENCE MEMBER

I was wondering, who’s the mastermind behind the drummer being not on the twos and fours, but more syncopated?

DAVID MATTHEWS

I don’t know. I once saw a website called James Brown’s Drummers. I don’t know if he came up with the idea – it all happened way before I got there, and it went back and forth. Hobgood once told me there was a time when they would do the boom, bap, boom bap and that kind of thing, when it was off the beat and it sounded like it was on the beat. And then later on, Hobgood said, “Well, we’ve done that, now, we’re doing everything on the back beat.” So, it went back and forth, and I’m not sure who came up with it.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

And also the bridges, obviously James Brown is notorious for. Was that something you helped him refine? Because I always thought they were prevalent in the years that you were involved with him.

DAVID MATTHEWS

I don’t remember. Basically, those grooves are one- or two-bar grooves. So once you get one that feels right, then you repeat it over and over again. So I can’t remember, it’s a long time ago.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

Can you tell us what is going on in a song like that though? Can you break it down in layman’s terms for the people that are listening to it?

DAVID MATTHEWS

Well, I said it before. Each guy, each section has its role. Basically it was up to James’s taste. “Does this feel good to me?” The horns are going “dadadadadada.” The clave beat, put into a guitar 16th-note pattern was a large part of what James liked. What they call the Bo Diddley guitar pattern. The rhythm guitar frequently played that kind of thing. The lead guitar would have a more melodic, rhythmic idea, which in a certain sense, it didn’t matter whether the guitar played it or the horns. Either one of them could have played it and it would have worked. So that’s what you got. The horn section playing one figure, the lead guitar playing another, the rhythm guitar kind of covering the whole thing, the bass the foundation and the drums covering the whole thing.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

I noticed, reading the credits of all the songs, that sometimes the musicians were different. Not the musicians that James Brown was using, like Jimmy Madison. Did you get to pick the actual musicians for the sessions?

DAVID MATTHEWS

OK, it depends on the year. When I was in Cincinnati, it was always the James Brown band that was on it. When I moved to New York and he started asking me to get New York studio musicians, then I picked ’em. Jimmy Madison, for example, was a virtuoso drummer from Cincinnati when he was 13 years old and we played jazz together. I guess he’s ten years younger than me or something. I called him for The Grodeck Whipperjenny and those kind of things. And then, when we both moved to New York, I continued to call him. But I called these New York studio guys who I thought would fit into that kind of a groove the best.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

How much time did you spend with the musicians you arranged for? Did you arrange for specific musicians in mind? Like, did you have a certain bass player in mind when you were writing basslines? And how many hours did you spend with them?

DAVID MATTHEWS

First of all, in all the music I’ve ever written, I always have in mind who is going to play it. This is a concept that Duke Ellington is frequently quoted. He wrote for the guy in his band that was going to play it, and I’ve done that with everything, including the James Brown stuff and everything else. As for how much time I spent with them, the musicians union in America has defined a session as being three hours long. And within those three hours you’re allowed to record 15 minutes of music or four tunes, one or the other. Which means that we showed up at one o’clock in the afternoon, here’s the music, you rehearse it as quickly as you can and you play it, you get four tunes done. So I spent three hours with them for each session. We would almost always do four tunes in a session in those days.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

While actually writing the music out on sheets, or whatever, would you sit down by yourself at the keyboard?

DAVID MATTHEWS

Yeah, I would sit down with a keyboard, or without a keyboard, and it would take however long it would take. In those days, I was Mr. Last Minute. And it was almost always done very quickly. I would write a whole record in a couple of days.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

How many parts did the horn section comprise in these tunes?

DAVID MATTHEWS

It would depend.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Usually, on average?

DAVID MATTHEWS

The instrumentation of the James Brown band before the JB’s, I thought was a very solid funk horn section, which consisted of two trumpets, a trombone, and three saxes. Usually I like to have two tenors and a bari[tone] because then you don’t have to transpose the alto part.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Which saxophones? Alto and tenor?

DAVID MATTHEWS

Well, usually I use two tenors and a bari.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Two tenors and a baritone?

DAVID MATTHEWS

Sometimes alto, tenor, bari.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

No french horn or flugelhorn?

DAVID MATTHEWS

Not in a James Brown arrangement. [smiles] Except, well, later on, he asked me to do things. He says, “Do something weird, use some oboes and French horns and stuff.” He specifically requested – on some of the records from the ’70s you can hear French horns and oboes on it. But that is not as much a true James Brown sound as the funk horn section I just mentioned.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

Did you ever hear James Brown make any explicit references to his listening to African musicians or even traditional African music?

DAVID MATTHEWS

As a matter of fact, I went to Nigeria with James one time, and Bud Hobgood had been there the year before. And he told me – I’m sure he got this from James – he says, “They’re way behind us over there.” [laughs] Which in a certain sense is a kind of lack of connection to their own culture. I met this guy who wrote a very interesting book – I think he was doing a doctorate in social anthropology or something. He wrote a little paper, a thin book about the remnants and continuation of African culture in the New World from a musical point of view. He had researched in both West Africa and in Brazil and especially... Cleveland! [laughter] He told me, you wouldn’t think of it like this, but he found more pure African culture – I don’t know when this was, maybe the early 1900s. A lot of black people from the South moved North to start working in factories, when the farms and stuff were going down in the South. He said, you can find African rhythms in black church music, and he found more stuff in Cleveland than anywhere else. So he wrote this book, he talked about certain African things like “call and response,” which you find in James’s music, and especially the clave rhythm, what do they call it? Polyrhythmic aspect. And it obviously has become American, but the African roots of it are there for somebody that wants to study and research the thing. But James himself, I think, was not connected to his African roots in that sense. He was in his heart, but he didn’t think about it, you know?

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

Earlier today when we were talking in the car, and I thought this was very interesting because I had completely forgot to pose the question to you. You being the guy who traveled with James to tune up his band and everything. Tony was so kind as to ask you. When you went to Lagos, there was a guy there who at that juncture was revolutionizing African music in much the same way that James was doing American music – Fela. And you got to see Fela’s band, didn’t you?

DAVID MATTHEWS

Yes. And it was the most amazing thing I had ever heard. It was the early years of what Fela had called the Afrobeat. And to some degree it incorporated James’s style and rhythms. They had a James Brown rhythm section, plus like eight percussionists, doing the African rhythm thing. And it was – you couldn’t sit down when they were playing. It was just so infectious, it was an amazing experience.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

So you saw Fela. And of course there’s a huge back and forth as to, how did all this funk stuff happen? Did James see Fela, vice versa and all that. You, in fact, were impressed with Fela’s arranging.

DAVID MATTHEWS

Yes.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

Did you bring any of that back when you were working with Bootsy and the guys?

DAVID MATTHEWS

Yes, I did. In fact some Nigerian kid gave me a tape of some of his stuff. And then Fela heard about it and he thought James was trying to steal his shit and he was angry. But I did try – some of those feels that I heard Fela and his band play in Lagos, I recorded... I’m not sure if it ever got released or not, but I did try to record some of that feeling with Bootsy and Clyde and Catfish.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

So then the mystery is at least partially answered.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

What I want to know is, did you work with any guys from the Apostles when they were still in exile? ’Cause I’ve got a record that says Dave Matthews.

DAVID MATTHEWS

The Apostles. I don’t remember anything like that.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Back to what you were talking about writing specific parts for specific musicians. Would you write individual figures for say, someone like Clyde Stubblefield? Would you write the exact notation of what you wanted him to play for a specific tune?

DAVID MATTHEWS

No, I would not. First of all, he wouldn’t be able to read it. And second of all, as an arranger, I try to know my place and to know the musician’s place. And if they can make it up better than I can, I don’t force my shit on them.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

What about, say, if you saw Fela and you saw Tony Allen’s drumming. How would try to get that across to Jabo Starks or Clyde Stubblefield, or if you were trying to cop a bit of that African feel and bring it back? Would you just play them a tape of the stuff, or would you just... ?

DAVID MATTHEWS

No. I wrote down the figures that I thought were typical of that kind of stuff, and then I sang ’em to Bootsy. And as I said, the bass pattern to me was the most important part. Everything kind of falls into place around that. And then Clyde would… Actually we had some trouble with it. Clyde was trying to play an 8th-note hi-hat pattern against it and it just wouldn’t happen, I don’t know why. And then Bootsy said, “Try 16th notes.” And that kind of locked it in.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

Now you moved to New York in the early 1970s, right?

DAVID MATTHEWS

Yes.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

About the same time that James was picked up by Polydor in a huge deal. In the early ’70s, Polydor acquired James Brown’s entire catalog from King Records, and James Brown the man himself. And you went up to New York, independently of James? Or with him?

DAVID MATTHEWS

Independently. He had had a house in Long Island for many years before that. At a certain point, I didn’t need to be in Cincinnati anymore, because we would record wherever he wanted to when I was off on the road with him. So it didn’t matter where I lived. And my friends had all moved to New York, so I did.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

And you locked into a steady gig when you first got to New York, of course?

DAVID MATTHEWS

Being James Brown’s arranger, yes.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

And you had actually put out, if not the first, then one of the first two records on James Brown’s own imprint, People. A really amazing, like I said, psychedelic record called The Grodeck Whipperjenny, which is unlike anything that you would hear James Brown doing before or after. And the People label would go on to have such artists as Maceo, Lyn Collins. You know, the famous drum break on “Think (About It)” by Jabo Starks, which is not only famous in the hip-hop world, but the drum & bass world as well. These are records which came out on People, but you would do arranging on all of them of course. Sometimes have songs. And you ended up branching away from James, when? In the mid-’70s?

DAVID MATTHEWS

Well, it was about ’75. James – he would sometimes play mind games with people, and sometimes he wouldn’t call Fred for a long time. He wouldn’t call me for a long time. And so I hadn’t heard from him for a while. And Creed Taylor, of CTI records and Kudu, called me to arrange a Ron Carter album. Creed was looking for someone who knew about funk because I think disco was starting to happen, and he wanted to capitalize on it. And so, after I had arranged that first record for Creed, and James hadn’t called, Creed asked me if I would like to be exclusive to CTI and Kudu records and I said sure. So the next time Mr. Bobbit, who was the manager, James’s manager for years and years, called me up, and James wanted an arrangement, I said, “I’m sorry, I can’t do it.” So it was 1975 when I started with CTI.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

And you put out solo records on the Kudu imprint actually, and CTI. And this is one David brought. The Shoogie Wanna Boogie album. And by this time you’re quite into a disco feel.

DAVID MATTHEWS

Well, that was what was happening. Creed said, “Let’s sell some records.” So, OK. My whole career as an artist, I felt... You know something? Let me tell you, I worked the famous first Central Park concert with Simon & Garfunkel, in 1980 I think it was. During that time period we had three weeks of rehearsal with Simon & Garfunkel, with a great band which included Steve Gadd and Richard Tee. Anybody know who Richard Tee was? Great piano player, great musician. Anyway, Paul Simon is the guy who wants to try everything and see which he likes out of it. So they started off playing some tune, and he would say, “Tee, don’t do that, do something else.” So Tee would do something else. And he would end up with ten different grooves, and every one of ’em was great. Paul was saying, “Do this, do that,” and everyone of them was great. I said, “That’s the kind of professional I want to be.” Tell me anything, and I’ll do my best to make something great out of whatever it is you wanted. Same with Creed with the disco record. I didn’t know what disco was. [laughs] But I made the best disco record I knew how at the time.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

Can we play some of this? From the Shoogie Wanna Boogie album. There’s recently been some edits circulating, from this record. Evidently, people have done some edits of this, floating them around on bootleg 12”s...

DAVID MATTHEWS

I love that word “bootleg.”

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

Much in the spirit of the early hip-hop... So this is “Gotta Be Where You Are,” a song you co-wrote.

DAVID MATTHEWS

Yes. I guess I wrote the coda, and Patti Austin or somebody else wrote the...

(music: David Matthews with Whirlwind – “Gotta Be Where You Are”)

And the truth is, that’s before... I don’t know if it was before the disco beat was formulated, or before I knew about it, because that’s dance music of a certain type, but it doesn’t sound like disco music that we know of. Later on, with Idris Muhammad...

[cuts to new section in video] OK, it’s basically a legal differentiation. I guess over history, and now the American Congress has defined, if you compose a melody, you are the writer. You are entitled to own half of the publisher’s share, the writer’s share of that. So that is in terms of a composer. Technically, what an arranger supposedly does is take somebody else’s melody and decide what harmony, what counterpoint, what beat, whatever. But it’s somebody else’s melody. And that’s the difference between the writer, who is actually a composer, and an arranger, who is a technician with whatever degree of talent, who completes that and turns it into a piece of music.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Just a question about the CTI thing. When you started doing the Kudu, the CTI stuff, and there were other arrangers like Don Sebesky and Eumir Deodato and stuff, how much rapport did you have with those guys when you put out a record? Or you in different time frames?

DAVID MATTHEWS

It was different time brackets. I think Bob James was working for Creed at the same time as Deodato. Before that, Don Sebesky had been the first arranger for CTI. And then when Bob James left, that’s why Creed hired me as the arranger, I guess.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Say, you put out a record on CTI, arranging for someone, and say Quincy Jones puts out a record with someone else, and he’s arranging, would you guys up the ante? Would you listen to that and say, “Wow, he’s doing this, this kind of arrangement, this kind of instrumentation. Then I’ve got to do this.” Was there a rapport amongst the arrangers?

DAVID MATTHEWS

There was no antagonism. I mean, I never hung out with Bob James. I met him a few times. But there wasn’t really a connection. But in terms of the type of music that was being made in any particular time period, everybody was kind of listening to what was going on, because if you’re not a part of your time, then it’s like The Grodeck Whipperjenny. You have to make the music that’s kind of like what’s going on at the time. You want to put your own stuff on it, but you got to know what’s happening, or else you’re off in a vacuum somewhere. And then you’re not talking to your people.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

So would you be listening to, say, Quincy Jones on one hand here, and still be listening to Duke Ellington and saying, “I’m still hearing something from Duke here”?

DAVID MATTHEWS

Well, let me ask you. Do you listen to old and new music, both?

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Yeah, course. I’m probably just stating the obvious here.

DAVID MATTHEWS

Yeah, well, you know. I was listening to Duke and Miles and Coltrane and Ornette Coleman. And James Brown and Sly & the Family Stone and Bach and Beethoven. All of those are what I love, just like you.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

And in the case of The Grodeck Whipperjenny, you were putting it all together, and making a record. You guys should look for that record, actually. An amazing representation of a record. A record that was made for a guy like James Brown saying, “Make me some underground music, Dave.” In 1970. And you get this guy who was doing all kinds of stuff. It’s been bootlegged or reissued, The Grodeck Whipperjenny by David Matthews on People.

DAVID MATTHEWS

The reason I brought it up, it was too outside of its time. Its time didn’t come until 1996 or something.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

It’s still coming now I, think. At the same time you’re doing all this popular stuff for CTI and Kudu, and there was some really, really popular jazz to come out on CTI and Kudu. Including a record of yours, the Star Wars record, which is actually entitled Dune. A very popular record, which I’m sure many of you guys will hear, and we’ll talk about it later when we get to the hip-hop sampling of your work. But you were also doing big band stuff in a completely different way, with this record right here. The Dave Matthews’ Big Band – Night Flight, which was done, actually, a year after the Shoogie Wanna Boogie album. I just want to play you guys a quick tune off this. I mean, actually I’m not going to play you the whole tune. But just to give you an example of what else he was doing in New York at the time.

(music: Dave Matthews’ Big Band – unknown)

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

It’s a little bit different from Princess Leia’s theme from Star Wars.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Road Runner’s Big Band.

[laughter]

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

And actually, this is what you’ve been doing. You’ve been doing big band stuff for the last 20-something years, largely in Japan. Can you tell us about how that happened? I mean, you’ve been doing James Brown’s stuff for years...

DAVID MATTHEWS

We have a question over there first.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

I’d just like to know, you’ve done a lot of composition of the years, of many different styles from jazz to blues, to soul, to bebop. What is your favorite type of composition? You have something that you really like to compose, or...?

DAVID MATTHEWS

I love all of it. I wish I had a better answer.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

And what was your favorite composition?

DAVID MATTHEWS

My favorite composition?

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Si. And why?

DAVID MATTHEWS

I wrote, on one of my Japanese records, I wrote a melody that Dave Sanborn played, called “Lonely Promises.” And I think it’s one of the more beautiful melodies that I’ve come up with.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

So you liked it because it is beautiful and moved you in a different way than the others? Compositions you made?

DAVID MATTHEWS

I think it’s outstanding. To me it’s outstanding, in terms of the beauty of the melody. I was asked to compose a score for a Japanese film that kinda went away. And I also composed another one of my more beautiful melodies, that nobody’s going to ever hear, because it’ll never get recorded. Maybe I’ll find the right place. But to ask me what’s a favorite, I have no answer for that. Sorry.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

I’m probably rushing up a bit, but you know, about these Japanese records you have done. This track called “Sambafrique,” it was released on a Japanese label, right? And it’s really hard to find now, all those Japanese releases. Impossible to find. I got mine on the Compost Records compilation. I really want to hear, what’s the story behind the track, and when did you start doing this type of special jazz?

DAVID MATTHEWS

By the way, has anyone heard the remix of that, that some guy in Canada did?

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Ah, Nick Holder, yeah. That’s the first time I heard the melody and stuff. But you know, then I heard the original is even a lot better. And of course I wanted to find the original one. And it was a lot better.

DAVID MATTHEWS

These mixers sometimes cut out the best part! [laughter] What happened was, in about 1980... 1979, I believe it was, there was a Japanese producer, working at, strangely enough, King Records, in Tokyo. He had been a salesman in charge of selling CTI product in Japan. So he knew about me because of that. In about 1979, the yen went way sky high and it became very financially easy for Japanese people to record in New York. So he had his project and he had somebody contact me, and I started arranging records for this Japanese label, King Records. After the first one I did, just as an arranger, I said, “Why don’t I produce a bunch of stuff for you?” And one of the projects we came up with, I wanted to do an all reggae record, ’cause I was really into reggae at that time. He thought it would be boring to have all reggae, so we decided to do half reggae, half kind of Afro rock, Afro fusion. So as the Brazilian part of this record, I composed this melody, which I called “Sambafrique,” which means African-style samba. And Michael Brecker played the melody on the tune, and I think I played part of it on Fender Rhodes. And the record went out, and sold pretty good in Japan. And now, 20 years later, it’s become some kind of underground cult hit in Europe. So, as I do frequently Google myself, I discovered it from that. [laughter] I found some blog or something... “Is David Matthews of ‘Sambafrique’ the same David Matthews as the David Matthews Orchestra?” I didn’t answer him, I don’t know. But “Sambafrique” was all out there, and I had no idea until I, you know...

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

I started Googling your name, after that track.

DAVID MATTHEWS

Oh, really?

[laughter]

AUDIENCE MEMBER

I have it with me.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

The original version?

AUDIENCE MEMBER

On Glücklich, you know?

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

Shall we play it?

[audience says “yeah” in unison]

AUDIENCE MEMBER

It’s one of the most beautiful tracks I ever heard, actually.

DAVID MATTHEWS

Thank you so much.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

Any other questions while we’re waiting to get the song?

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Generally speaking, is there a certain opinion you have, about people borrowing samples and music and all that? What’s your position on all that recent phenomenon of sampling, borrowing, stealing? It’s a recycling of sound. Do you have a statement on that? I personally want to know how you find the whole situation.

DAVID MATTHEWS

OK, I have very strong opinions. I am a professional composer. I make my living, I pay my rent for me and my family, from the music I create. I truly think that for someone to take it and not pay me for it is stealing, and I’m very, very much against that. I realize that a lot of people doing this are in very, very small areas where there’s no money, and they just can’t get the record company to give them a license. But I just think it is wrong to steal somebody’s creative effort. And this guy Nick Holder built himself an entire career as a DJ and a label from my tune. And I just don’t think that’s right. That’s how I feel. Anybody disagree with that?

AUDIENCE MEMBER

True. I really cannot have anything against that. I respect that fully. But what about remixes then?

DAVID MATTHEWS

About what?

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Remixes. It used to be called the cover version, but now with the technical equipment, it’s like a remix. That’s the term.

DAVID MATTHEWS

I mean, I don’t care what you call it. If you use my stuff, I’m reasonable, I can make a deal with you. But if you use my stuff, I think I should be paid for it, no matter what form. And if you use three seconds of my stuff, out of a ten-minute song, then give me three cents or something. [laughter] But don’t steal my shit and call it yours. [laughter / applause]

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

Now I think, before we play this track, you’re bringing up a really good point. And it’s something I’ve often wondered. In the case of, let’s just say, a song like “Sandworms.” Large Professor sampled that for Mad Scientis. Here’s the case of a record where you don’t own the master recording. You do own your share of the writer’s, because you in fact sold your publishing to Creed Taylor as well...

DAVID MATTHEWS

Yes.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

So there are probably 70, 80 people that have to be gotten through to even reach you.

DAVID MATTHEWS

Yes.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

And these are the people that can stymie the process.

DAVID MATTHEWS

I do understand that, and it’s a problem. But nonetheless, right is right.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

I mean, do you think that there could be a better way? Let’s just say, if the laws were reworked so that the writer of the song, the publishers of the song are all taken into account, it’s a little bit more democratic than the way you’re asking for permission to use it?

DAVID MATTHEWS

Well, what is kind of a drag for the little guys trying to get started in that field is that I would be reasonable, but the suits at CBS or somewhere, there’s not enough money in it for them to care. So that makes it difficult on whomever of you wants to be involved in sampling, and I don’t have a solution.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

But you have definitely got some good checks, right? Biggie Smalls?

DAVID MATTHEWS

Yep. I got some huge checks from Biggie Smalls and Method Man and Redman and Nas.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Was the Large Professor one cleared?

DAVID MATTHEWS

I got a letter from the Large Professor’s manager or somebody. I don’t think I ever got any money from it. I got a letter from him, “May I use this?” I said, “Yes, you may.”

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Do you get money from your publishing? For all those songs?

DAVID MATTHEWS

None of the CTI stuff.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

OK, how about Grodeck Whipperjenny?

DAVID MATTHEWS

No, James owns that.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Oh, James owns publishing and the master, of it so...

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

If you signed the contract.

DAVID MATTHEWS

If I didn’t, then I’m screwed, so that’s all. [laughter]

AUDIENCE MEMBER

So, if I was to sample something of yours, could I just call you and we’d set a deal with Creed Taylor? [laughter]

DAVID MATTHEWS

The problem is, I’m not the only guy. I only control my half of the publishing, and somebody else has the master rights for the recording of it. And you know, they spent money recording that stuff, they deserve those rights, they were the ones that risked their money in the first place.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Creed Taylor doesn’t own the rights to that stuff any more.

DAVID MATTHEWS

You know what I got to say about that. Thank god! [laughter] For years I didn’t get a cent from my writer’s share on my CTI stuff. And when he finally sold it to some big German publishing company... Thank god that he sold it before that money came from Biggie Smalls and those guys, or else he would have had it instead of me. These guys who have it now, they have my address and they send me checks every quarter like they’re supposed to.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Would you recommend for a DJ to get musical training, to study music theory, and learn to play an instrument?

DAVID MATTHEWS

Well, I think that any kind of knowledge that anybody can have makes them better off. So I’m not going to recommend anything, but if you think learning an instrument will help you in any way – and I can’t think of anything bad about learning to play an instrument or knowing something about music. I have no recommendation, but the more you know, the better off you are is how I feel in general.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

Any other questions before we play this track?

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Just on something that you touched on, Egon, about the sampling again. How do you feel about when people sample the “Funky Drummer,” which is Clyde Stubblefield’s. Is that his signature feel? Did he compose that particular figure? Because James Brown will get paid for it when people sample it, right?

DAVID MATTHEWS

Yeah, OK. There is one of the kind of inequities in the copyright law. The fact is that all jazz musicians are composers, but they are not recognized by the law as that. So there’s a problem. Until that law is changed, there’s nothing can be done. Clyde created that, but he has no rights to it. Fixing that would be so complicated, I don’t know how they can do it.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

And it’s deeper than that even, because we’re talking about Bud Hobgood, “production coordinator” as an official title, whose name is songwriter on probably 150 different James Brown songs. Bud Hobgood probably wasn’t anywhere near the studio at the time that the Dapps were recording “Bringing Up the Guitar,” but he’s the writer of the song.

DAVID MATTHEWS

I guess he was in the studio.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

Oh, really?

DAVID MATTHEWS

I think so. All those things from the Cincinnati King [Records] days, he was there.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

So he might have written a song, you know?

DAVID MATTHEWS

But whether he wrote or not, chances are...

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

Probably not...

DAVID MATTHEWS

People wondered for years – did Bud Hobgood have something on James? Some secret that James didn’t want out? Everybody wondered why he was giving Bud Hobgood all these songs, which Bud Hobgood told me he was making 80 thousand dollars in 1969. You know how much that is?

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

Yeah, it’s amazing when I find another obscure James Brown production that’s credited to Bud Hobgood, but I mean, these are problematic things that need to be addressed in some form. And I think that a lot of the people who are more conscious about this, working in the music industry now are thinking about it. But you know, we’re all thieves in our own right, so it’s very difficult to carry on a conversation like this with someone like you, who has seen the good and seen the bad.

DAVID MATTHEWS

Yeah.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

How do you write your arrangements? I mean what is the process? Do you write them fast, or... ?

DAVID MATTHEWS

For the last 15 or 20 years, I sequence everything. I use Digital Performer, which is probably a dinosaur for most of the people around here. I usually start off with the rhythm. Maybe I’ll have a melody to arrange. First I’ll put down the rhythm, then I’ll put down the basic melody on it, and then I’ll just play with it and tease it and change it. And then once I get an idea of how the melody will go down, then I’ll slowly start changing the rhythm, until it finally evolves into what becomes the final arrangement. And then I use Sibelius as a notation program to print it out and take it to the studio.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

Any more questions before we play you the final track that we’re going to play you with Mr David – not Dave – Matthews?

DAVID MATTHEWS

Ha!

(music: David Matthews – “Sambafrique”)

AUDIENCE MEMBER

I just wanted to ask you about, if there was one thing you considered the essence of arranging. And also, I think you can hear, there’s a big love of Duke Ellington, obviously, but what would be some of your favorite arrangers?

DAVID MATTHEWS

Well, my absolute favorite arranger and my inspiration, since I was 20, was Gil Evans. So if anybody can find records of my big band, Manhattan Jazz Orchestra, you can see the tremendous amount of Gil Evans influence in my work. And in fact, I spent at least 20 years trying to copy Gil Evans as close as I can. And finally, I wrote one arrangement. I wrote a tune. And Lew Soloff plays in both my quintet and my big band. He’s played with the Gil Evans orchestra for 20 years. We run it down in rehearsal and he’s playing the solo on this tune, it was kind of like Miles and Gil Evans together. And after about four or five bars, he stops playing and starts cracking up and he says, “You did it! It sounds so much like Gil Evans.” And I was so happy. Now I don’t have to try anymore. I can go out and search for my own soul in arranging. But Gil Evans has been my inspiration for a long time.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

And what was the thing about Gil Evans?

DAVID MATTHEWS

To me, if you listen, Gil Evans made four records with Miles Davis. The first one was called Miles Ahead or Miles +21. And if you listen to several of those arrangements, I think they were recorded in 1957 – I listen to them as a professional arranger – to me they are still as fresh as you can be within that format. Gil just broke with the past and made something that sounds great, so fresh that it still sounds fresh in the 21st century. In terms of the sax section, he stopped using the colors like [Count] Basie and Ellington did. My band doesn’t have a sax section. I have a bass clarinet, a doubler and Chris Hunter who plays kind of like [David] Sanborn except much more involved. Three of them, used as color. So Gil broke within the jazz big band tradition, completed something totally new that still sounds great. I don’t know how to explain it any more.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Who were the instrumentalists on the last track?

DAVID MATTHEWS

I know for sure it was Steve Gadd on drums. I recognized the tom-tom sound immediately. I think it was probably Will Lee and it sounded like Ralph McDonald on percussion and Mike Brecker was playing the sax solo. I was playing Fender Rhodes.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

A real one?

DAVID MATTHEWS

I’m sorry, a real Fender Rhodes? We’re talking about 1976. No, that was a real one. [laughter]

AUDIENCE MEMBER

How does it sounds so fresh? Because it’s 1976. As a sound, I mean.

DAVID MATTHEWS

I don’t know. [laughter]

AUDIENCE MEMBER

It sounds like it was made yesterday.

DAVID MATTHEWS

Maybe it’s Rudy Van Gelder’s fault. [laughter] I can’t possibly answer that question. But as I listen, it sounds great, doesn’t it? One of the things, as a record producer now, one of the things I learned from Creed Taylor was how to make a classy, good sounding record. He was almost obsessed with cleanliness of the sound quality. And Rudy Van Gelder, who was his engineer during most of that time period, was almost crazy in terms of his cleanliness. Anal, compulsive, whatever you want to he call it. [laughter] He just... Anybody who has ever heard of Rudy Van Gelder knows the stories. He would go out of the control room and into the studio to change a mic. He’d come over with white gloves, they said. He was a very clean kind of guy and his sound represented that. And possibly that’s why, because both of them were extremely concerned with good, clean, clear sound.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

I think that’s really all we have. I mean, like I said, I would definitely encourage you to go and find a slept-on David Matthews masterpiece, The Grodeck Whipperjenny. Because it has been bootlegged or reissued or whatever it was. And as an aside, because obviously funk is such a big deal to me, you know, it’s an interesting note that one of the heaviest James Brown-related productions is actually credited to, “Produced by, arranged by and written by David Matthews.” A track called “Across the Track” by the Believers, which you can find on a compilation called James Brown’s Funky People No. 3. Just a classic example of something right happening, dumb luck again, and one of the heaviest funk tracks that you’ll hear by the masters of the genre. And I’m sure there’s tons of different tracks which you can recommend to people if they see you.

DAVID MATTHEWS

Maybe you can recommend better than me.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

Perhaps.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

I had one more question. With the fusion jazz, which you did a lot, can you say something about it, with which musicians you did it?

DAVID MATTHEWS

When I first started recording for the Japanese labels, we made quite a few, maybe ten fusion records. Fusion is a somewhat vague term, meaning “mix something together.” My kind of jazz fusion was always more funk-oriented than rock-oriented. The same people who I’d been recording with at CTI, who were the top studio musicians in New York, and I mean that with a sense of respect, as opposed to... What do some English people call it, “musos”? These guys were always great musicians, which includes Steve Gadd, Will Lee, Gary King, Neil Jason, Richard Tee, Dan Groenig. Anybody know any of these names? These were the top cats in the ’70s.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Did you ever work with Dave Valentine?

DAVID MATTHEWS

No, I never did. He was a CTI artist, but I didn’t actually. I think he had left CTI by the time I started working there.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

David, are you keeping an ear on modern electronic music? The guys that are fusing old funky stuff with modern beats.

DAVID MATTHEWS

Not really. Now I have a career as a jazz artist in Japan. So, our kind of jazz is strictly acoustic. What I’m more concerned with now is searching within myself for new ways of doing the same thing that we’ve been doing. So in terms of electronic stuff, sampling, that kind of thing, it’s not part of what I’m involved with right at this moment.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

You are pretty skeptical about it?

DAVID MATTHEWS

I think a whole lot of what we’re hearing these days in that genre, we won’t care about in five years. Maybe I’m wrong, I don’t know. But to be ahead of your time, which is what most young artists want to do, is dangerous to miss your time. You understand what I mean? Experimentation is extremely important, but 90 percent of it will be gone soon. Not that my stuff won’t. Actually, it’s already out, but I’m not so interested in that kind of thing. You know, I heard some really interesting beats the other day at the session... [laughter / applause] I did, I heard some really interesting beats. And it reminded me, of when I got my first drum machine, I used to get drunk, and put on my headphones. [laughter / applause] And I would play it and erase a figure. And I’d have like a 45-minute rhythm pattern that would go on. It reminded me of some of the stuff I was hearing yesterday. Really fun, and I really loved it. And I’m not denigrating anybody. Yes?

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Do you have any of that drunk, playing-around stuff?

DAVID MATTHEWS

No, I don’t have it with me. It all evaporated into thin air.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

That would be interesting to hear what those patterns sound like.

DAVID MATTHEWS

Actually, having heard some of that stuff yesterday made me think like, maybe I should put some of that stuff on CD, next time I’m playing around with it. Because it can be really exciting. It’s just, I’m not sure whether I can sell it.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

It’s beyond selling. But I can assure you, it would be something hip to listen to.

DAVID MATTHEWS

Well, I would hope so.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

I got a question. Would you have any advice for someone who doesn’t really dig on records anymore? I mean, I used to go crate-digging once in a while, a whole lot. But not anymore. Do you have any advice for someone who’s just trying to get their talent going down, and all their theory down. Young composers.

DAVID MATTHEWS

Well, they’ve got to find somebody that knows and learn of them. Somebody who is a teacher, who can teach you exactly what you want to know. It could be hard to find them, but somebody out there. If you’re studying counterpoint, it’s really hard to do it on your own. Because you write it, you say, “Well, is it good or not? I’m not sure.” If you have a professional, a knowledgeable person who would say, “Well, that note doesn’t really fit right,” somebody to guide you, you need somebody. I had somebody when I was young, I hated it. When I first started taking composition lessons in music school, I wanted to write music.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Because it’s so tedious.

DAVID MATTHEWS

It is so tedious. My teacher made me write two- and three-part counterpoint for two or three years. I said, “What did I want to do this for?” And now, I look at my big band writing. It’s more counterpoint than anybodies I’ve ever heard and it’s because of those years I spent of that tedium, of doing counterpoint exercises. There’s no way through it. The good thing about nowadays is you can sequence it, and listen to it, and say, “Hmm, does that make me feel something?” Whereas I always had to plunk it out on the piano. But I think you need somebody to guide you, and then you just got to go through the tedium. Because that’s the only way you can master it, and it’s the only way you can get to be to make music out of it, instead of exercises.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

You said you had a drum machine and you were into it, doing some beats on that. Are you into, have you ever sampled yourself, just for kicks?

DAVID MATTHEWS

No, I don’t have a sampler.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

But you could put something on the drum machine, whatever you got...

DAVID MATTHEWS

No, I never have.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

OK, I guess you haven’t. But in terms of counterpoint and all the theory that you know, do you find that would help in listening for samples? I find it helps me. Like you were talking about 9ths and 13ths and all those different chords. I mean, I find the theory I’m learning now helps me in terms of listening for different samples to chop up, not necessarily steal and loop and take money from your pocket.

DAVID MATTHEWS

Yeah.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Would you support that? I think that’s relevant.

DAVID MATTHEWS

I have ideas about that. My answer is – I’m not sure. In some ways, some of the most creative stuff that you hear out there nowadays in the hip-hop field are from people that don’t know theory, don’t know anything about chords, and who put it together because it feels right to them, and may be really weird theoretically. So in terms of how much you know in harmony, counterpoint and theory, you have to be able to transcend it and not be locked into what the old rules were. You have to know it and know that you gotta go beyond it, or else you’re hampering, you’re holding yourself back. And it took me, of course, years to get past that. But I feel I have. Now I know all the rules, I know I can do it in my sleep. I can do it without even thinking about the rules. And I feel like I can go beyond it and not be held back by it. But for a young person, you’ve got to be careful, you’ve got to master it. Once you’ve mastered it, you can leave it behind.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Thanks.

EOTHEN “EGON” ALAPATT

Well, this is David Matthews!

[applause]