First off, what are you up to now in your career?
I’m here in Minneapolis – I’m semi-retired and concentrating on projects that I really like and working on my LP Music project with my associate Paul Peterson – we both played together with Prince.
We also brought back the group The Family – we regrouped from The Family that Prince worked with in the 80’s. We call it F Deluxe now sometimes though.
And I’m a Yankees and Dodgers fan – I’m a bi-coastal baseball fan so I watch them a lot. I used to be a Pirates fan when I lived there during the height of the franchise in the 70s and 80s!
How did your music career begin – did it start in Pittsburgh?
My family moved to Pittsburgh in 1966 – when I was 14. I played the saxophone before the move – I played since I was 10 years old. I didn’t make the decision to make it a career until high school though.
I went to Taylor Allderdice High School in Squirrel Hill and graduated in 1970, then went to Duquesne’s School of Music. My interest then was jazz and R&B and Afro Funk.
That’s a unique genre of music for a teenager – how did you come to like those genres?
My brother had an extraordinary career in the music business – he worked for James Brown then Prince and managed Paisley Park Records. He fell in love with jazz and R&B and brought that all home with him. A component of being a little brother is wanting to be like your big brother. He’d bring back Fats Domino and Little Richard records – that’s what I was exposed to. Then he brought back Ray Charles and that’s what did it for me. The saxophonists that worked with Ray Charles were really my primary influences.
Where did it go from there?
My uncle – my father’s younger brother – he was a station manager for a New York radio station – he helped create the Top 40 format. He’d send us boxes of records and when we visited him I’d get exposed to even more different stuff. That music informed me – Black American music was where rock and roll and jazz came from. From there I went to Duquesne – I just wanted to go to a credible school to get the basics down.
How did you first get the courage to play in front of people?
Before we moved to Pittsburgh we lived in Richmond, Va. I was in some bands there and we’d play at private parties when I was 13. At Duquesne we’d play at concerts too – so I don’t remember how I felt the first time I played live.
While I was at Duquesne I started to work with other musicians and form groups and do pickup gigs. My first band was called The Matrix – several of those band members became mentors of mine. Henry Cardillo was the pianist and Don DePaolis was well known in the Pittsburgh jazz scene too. I also got to know Eric Kloss who was a mainstay of the Pittsburgh jazz scene and is still an icon of the Pittsburgh jazz scene.
We opened for Weather Report at the Syria Mosque and became a successful bar band – we had two albums – “On the Corner” and “Taking Names”.
In 1979 though I left the band and played for Billy Price who was with a top band in Pittsburgh – The Keystone Rhythm Band. But I moved away in 1982 and left his band.
Why did you leave?
My dear friend from Duquesne, Matt Blistan, moved to Atlanta and I went to hang with him. I wanted a change of scenery – I shared a house with him and his wife. In 1983 my brother started working for Prince as his road manager then became the head of Prince’s business operations.
In 1984 Prince decided to form a band called The Family. That was the first band where he needed a saxophonist. My brother told him that if he didn’t have one yet he knew where to find one! He played a recording of mine for Prince and Prince was impressed by it and asked me to join. Nothing wrong with nepotism! Prince didn’t sing in the band – just wrote the music for it.
We recorded our first album in 1985 and had a top 10 R&B song called Screams of Passion. But afterwards our singer Paul Peterson left the group. Prince decided to stop working on the band then and asked me to join his band Prince & the Revolution full time. That was right after Purple Rain.
So that’s how your Prince connection began…
Exactly. He also wanted a trumpeter, so he had me bring in Matt Blistan. By 1989 the band broke up but my relationship with Prince had grown so he had me record my songs with him and then offered me my own record deal. I had two albums of my own – “Times Squared” and “Things Left Unsaid”.
What was working with Prince like at first?
I came into it from a detached perspective. To be honest I wasn’t a big fan of his music when I met him – it wasn’t my genre. But Prince had no illusions that people had to like him or his music. We were paid to play not to love his music. I was never overly impressed with Prince as a persona – but the opportunity to be involved in the process of making music with him was great – he was a remarkable musician.
What made him such a great artist?
As an instrumentalist – he wasn’t just a great guitarist, though he could have been very successful just as a singer and guitarist. But he was a great bassist, drummer and keyboardist too. His musical creativity and songwriting – he just had great musical intuition. He could coalesce the point of bringing people together to make music effectively. I was always leery of the word genius – most can’t define the word when asked. But I know it when I hear it. It was as much about his hard work.
Like the book Outliers- hard work breeds “genius”?
Exactly. Prince was a workaholic. He owned his own studios and had little other interests besides music. He’d be in his recording studio all the time when he wasn’t on the road.
Matt and I had a rare advantage. We were the only ones that could play an instrument he couldn’t play. When he went to lay down tracks he’d often do so for all of the instruments – even drums – and he had one of the most amazing drummers ever in Sheila E. But when he needed horns he called me and Blistan!
What was Prince like to work with?
There were no rules in the studio – it all depended on the mood he was in and what he thought of for a particular song. Sometimes he’d call us in knowing exactly what he wanted. He didn’t read or write music so he’d play or sing or hum what he wanted and we’d write it down. But he worked so fast and he had little patience. That added tension to the process which I think was good – you had to be on your game that way.
Other times he just had basic ideas for us and needed us to add something. We’d do something and he’d comment on it “Let’s do it this way” and we may add “What about this?”… you throw enough shit against the wall until something sticks. He wanted it fast. And sometimes he just had us write and record stuff and give it to him when he wasn’t in the studio.
Any interesting moments with him you can share?
One memory was when he asked us to play our instruments like it was the first time we ever played them. That was his way of getting us to think outside of the box. That was something Miles Davis would do and that was my biggest influence as an artist.
You never knew what you’d be doing that day in the studio with him. Some days he’d call you to come in at eight p.m. and you’d be here for two hours, and some days you wouldn’t get out until two a.m.
Stepping back to your Pittsburgh influences – was there anything about living there that influenced or affected you most as an artist?
I don’t know if there was a specific influence. I loved living in Squirrel Hil and later in Shadyside. I loved going to Three Rivers as a baseball fan. But I think as far as influencing my music – it was more about the musicians I grew up with. Kloss, DePaolis, Blistan…and the teachers at Duquesne that became mentors to me.
If I moved to Chicago, Philadelphia or Cleveland I think my trajectory would have been similar. I would have gravitated to the same types of musicians. But I have very fond memories of Pittsburgh. It was home – and when I go back and see friends it has that same feeling for me. It’s home. That feeling never goes away.