by Nile Rodgers
“Well, take your stuff and get the hell out of here,” we were told. “We’re doing you a favor.”
They thought that they’d called our bluff, but we weren’t bluffing. Graham couldn’t jeopardize his relationship with the Unganos, so our de facto managers, White Panther members Mike Kleinman and “Famous” Toby Mamis (Toby later wound up managing, of all people, Alice Cooper), phoned Mickey Ruskin, who owned a bar called Max’s Kansas City on Park Avenue around Eighteenth Street, to see if we could play there instead.
They convinced Mickey that their unknown band had some devoted followers who’d guzzle beers all night and told him the band would play for free. Somehow fate was on our side, because most nights during this period the Velvet Underground would be performing, but not that night, as this was the last week of their run.
We half packed the house, and our energy was strong. We played all night and I’m pretty sure we made some sort of history. The fact is, I’d been going to Max’s for ages to eat the free food at happy hour (our drummer went to the School of Visual Arts, and Max’s was like an SVA annex). Most of the acts I’d seen there were duos and trios. The Velvet Underground had the most people (four) I’d ever seen on Max’s stage until New World Rising played. Though the evening didn’t set the world on fire, it was successful enough that soon Max’s started to feature larger bands. Mickey booked the room as “Upstairs at Max’s Kansas City.” Alice Cooper even played there a few weeks after us!
You won’t see New World Rising’s name in rock-and-roll history books. We didn’t become famous, but we were among the first wave of jazz-blues-rock-fusion electrified bands in the Village.
Clubs like the Electric Circus, Café Wha?, the Dom, and Generation (which became Electric Lady Studios), as well as artists like the Fugs and the Blues Project (with Danny Kalb), were turning Village audiences from collegiate beatnik folkies into drop-out psychedelic acid freaks, who literally “danced” to this music. A new crop of larger groove-jazz-influenced bands started appearing on the scene: Elephant’s Memory, Blood, Sweat & Tears, Ten Wheel Drive, and many others.
OUR BAND WAS QUICKLY gaining a nice little rep and played gigs for audiences from hard-core bikers to softhearted peaceniks. In those days our broad range of music had something for everybody. We even survived a week at the Gold Lounge, in Harlem, where a triple homicide occurred the first night we played there. But we stuck it out, even though it was a just a “fifteen center” (fifteen dollars a night per band member). By now it was clear that the rock-and-roll bug had bitten me, and its infection had specific delusional symptoms: Every gig was Woodstock, every girl was a model, and every paycheck was a fortune. I pursued show business like the conquistadors pursued gold in the New World. We advanced at an unprecedented pace, soon making as much as thirty-five dollars a man(!), and I was becoming one of the known cats. We were on a mission to capture the hearts, minds, and souls of the city’s toughest crowds. While the war in Vietnam was raging, our battle for New York was just beginning.
I was in the thick of the hip alternative music scene and gigged or jammed more or less every night.
ONE EVENING THAT SAME YEAR, I wound up at someone’s loft that doubled as a recording studio. When I got there, a platoon of musicians were jamming, and I plugged in my guitar and started wailing. I had just dropped orange acid and was tripping pretty heavy. I hadn’t even turned eighteen, but already knew of most of these musicians personally, and I add their names here for the hard-core music history cognoscenti, for whom this list should be a revelation. Our group that night included Chip White, a popular jazz drummer; George Braith, a brilliant saxophonist who played two horns simultaneously; Calvin Hill, bassist extraordinaire who had just joined McCoy Tyner; Ned Liben, who later became tech-pop superstar EBN; Velvert Turner, a good friend and musician who palled around with Jimi Hendrix.
And then I turned and noticed Jimi himself, who’d been in town a lot lately as he was building a studio of his own.
That night the collective meshed together. We moved and grooved like a flock of birds, each flying on our own power but somehow heading in the same direction and always winding up in the same place, as if by some internal programming.
The studio was thick with cigarette and cannabis smoke. We were drinking from flasks filled with Almaden wine. There must have been girls there, but I don’t remember a single one. I was temporarily in a world where the only people were musicians. “Hey, man,” I said to the cat playing next to me, who I knew was the studio’s engineer. “Are you feeling what I’m feeling?”
“Yeah,” he said, “this is beautiful.” I know we were all very high, but we were keenly aware of our senses and surroundings. Acid can sometime heighten the way you experience everything. I was taking in all the sounds.
“Did you hear that?” someone said, reacting to a riff. “We might find the lost chord [hippie slang for musical nirvana] tonight.”
Then I said, “Man, this is the greatest stuff I’ve ever heard in my life.”
After what felt like a millennium, our number reached a crescendo. Then we slowed the tempo and backed the volume down to complete silence. We knew we’d just experienced a once-in-a-lifetime event. The collective’s total was much greater than the sum of its individual parts. We were exhausted and fulfilled. The voices in my head and the hallucinations faded. A hint of daylight crept under the door. The room was silent except for our breathing.
Then suddenly a familiar voice broke the silence. It was Jimi speaking for the first time all night—or maybe the first time I could hear him.
“Hey, man,” he said, sheepishly. “Uh, did anybody record that, man?”
We’d been so caught up in the moment—and of course so high—that no one had thought to roll tape!
Which is why my teenage jam session with Jimi Hendrix in the house lives on only in the memories of a small band of survivors who’ve laughed about this night with me many times over.*
SHORTLY AFTER MY EVENING with Hendrix, I had another bad acid trip and moved back to the Bronx with my mom, who now lived at 1744 Clay Avenue near Grand Concourse. At this point in her life, my mom didn’t keep one steady boyfriend. Instead, she kept a large number of them to help her make ends meet. She’d soon become pregnant with her last child, from one of the Italian guys. His son is my youngest brother, Dax. True to form, Big Bobby gave Dax his last name: Glanzrock. For most of his childhood, Dax believed Bobby was his biological father.
ATTEMPTING ONE LAST GO at formal education, I checked into William Howard Taft High School. My life felt so rich, and so much had happened to me, but I still wasn’t old enough to graduate.
Around this time I met a girl whose family had a significant impact on me: Connie Rodgers, a stylish, hip, jazz-fed white girl with a voluptuous figure. She was a student at Taft and totally out of my league, but somehow we ended up together.
Connie’s stepfather was a famous upright-bass player named Ray McKinney. He was her younger brother Chris’s dad, and he was black. Having Chris around was like having a new little brother. In a strange way, our families were cut from similar cloth. Connie’s mom, Betty, mostly dated black jazz musicians, so her daughter dating me wasn’t much of a stretch. Betty, like my white stepfather, Bobby, was beyond cool. It was she who would introduce me to my future partner, Bernard Edwards. They’d worked together at the post office’s main branch, Grand Central Station. Connie’s mother let me move in with them, when out of the blue my mom suddenly decided to go west for good.
EVEN THOUGH I STILL WORE freakishly large (but trendy) hippie glasses, I was a jazzer at heart, because jazz was the music of choice in my beatnik parents’ household. I loved it, too. My guitar playing was progressing naturally and had gotten much better. It was around that time that I started studying with two very important teachers: Ted Dunbar and Billy Taylor. Billy Taylor, a living legend, was the director of the Jazzmobile program, which was dedicated to teaching young people jazz (which he called “America’s classical music�
�). It was located in Harlem at public school I.S. 201, where I studied as if my life depended on it.
During the time I studied there, I got more subbing gigs than any other guitar student. Ted Dunbar taught the guitar class at Jazzmobile, and I also took private lessons from him. Ted played with his thumb like Wes Montgomery, and was a master of harmony, and that rubbed off on me. I was getting better and better.
I needed to expand and I started studying traditional classical guitar with Maestro Julio Prol, in Greenwich Village. This too was a natural fit. Throughout my childhood, classical music was the one class in school I always looked forward to. My skill at reading music, which I acquired from jazz and classical training, helped me get more professional gigs, even though I was mostly substituting for the name cats. I didn’t see it at the time, but the puzzle pieces of my scattered life were starting to link together. During improvisation lessons, Ted Dunbar used to constantly yell, “Nile, connect your shit!”
On one of my very first subbing gigs, I ran into a Van Nuys Airport alum named Wes Farrell, the record executive, who was married to Christina “Tina” Sinatra. In classic airport fashion, he gave me a nice “tip” that night, which would lead to a host of musical jobs: TV and radio commercials, recording sessions, as well as a gig playing in the backup band for an act on his label called New York City. My shit was starting to connect.
I HAD FUNDAMENTALLY QUIT public school but was hardly giving up on my education. Actually, my goal, now that music had become so central in my life, was to enroll in a college-level music program. I’d been an indifferent high school student at best, and of course lacked a diploma. My classical guitar teacher wanted me to go to the extension division of the Juilliard School, which had recently relocated to Lincoln Center. I was also interested in the Manhattan School of Music, which had moved into the space vacated by Juilliard, across from Columbia University.
One day, when I was visiting the Manhattan campus, trying to decide which place was best for me, John Moody, a bass player friend of mine, said auditions for Sesame Street’s theatrical road show were being held there in one of the practice rooms. They were looking for a guitarist.
I was in the right place, at the right time, playing the right instrument, and I got the gig.
I wound up touring all over the country with the Sesame Street band and, for the first time in my life, made a real living playing the guitar. The job changed my life, and marks for me the day I truly became a professional musician. It changed my mother’s life, too—from that day forward I’ve financially subsidized her lifestyle.
IT TURNED OUT that one of the stars of Sesame Street, Loretta Long, who played Susan, was married to the guy who managed the Apollo Theater in Harlem.
One day Loretta’s husband told her about an opening for a guitarist in the Apollo house band. The current guitarist, Carlos Alomar (whose wife, Robin, would later sing on my debut hit single), was leaving to join David Bowie’s “Young Americans” tour. They needed a guitar player who could read music and learn the repertoire fast. Loretta told them about this guy with weird hair (at the time I had a big electric Afro that was corn-rowed until showtime) who was really good. She got me an audition.
I arrived at the Apollo proudly wearing Landlubber hip-hugger bell-bottoms that I’d embroidered with psychedelic flowers and patches. On my feet were natural-colored python-skin platform boots.
The Apollo was all about traditional black music, and I was more into Country Joe and the Fish than I was into Joe Tex, but had big love for blues and jazz. The songs I played for the audition were “I Put a Spell on You,” from blues legend Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, and “Clean Up Woman,” by Betty Wright. The latter arrangement was in F sharp, about eight or nine pages long. Guitar players are by and large notoriously bad sight readers, but by then I could read my skinny black hippie ass off.
I didn’t miss a note, but I had a strict interpretation of the chart. I didn’t understand R&B-style interpretation of the notation yet, which was definitely not cool, but I could follow the conductor very well and that made up for my lack of soul. They auditioned me because of Loretta, but I earned the gig with my playing. (This skill also helped me get hired as a studio musician. If you’re over forty, you’ve likely heard me play classical guitar on a popular Savarin coffee commercial from the seventies.)
A typical show at the Apollo featured a variety of artists. The first artist on the bill for my maiden night was Screamin’ Jay. The music director knew that I could sight-read right through the show, so he told me I didn’t have to make Jay’s rehearsal. I just needed to be backstage an hour before the curtain.
I used this free time to casually tour this familiar part of Harlem. Urban renewal was in full effect. The Apollo was just two blocks from the old Black Panther office, and around the corner from the Gold Lounge, where my old band had been overshadowed by a triple homicide. I walked east on 125th Street to Seventh Avenue and saw the New York State Office Building (President Clinton’s future office site). A few months earlier, we community protesters had closed it down; now it was buzzing with construction workers.
I reminisced about my activist days. Now I was here to do a different type of community service, playing at the world-famous Apollo Theater. The last time I was on this block, I was marching “in formation” and would jump at the orders of Kathleen Cleaver; today I jumped to a different voice.
BACK INSIDE THE APOLLO, the stage manager screamed over a cheap little loudspeaker. “The half is in, the half is in,” he said, which was code for “Thirty minutes to showtime.” The whole place operated with the precision of a combat submarine. The stylish Ebony Fashion Fair audience didn’t seem to fit the scarlet-and-gold-colored vaudeville-era theater, but the Apollo broke every rule that I’d been living by. I’d mostly worked for people who appreciated you from the moment you hit the stage, but the Apollo was well known for chewing up the biggest stars and spitting them out. I couldn’t wait to show them what the hippie with thick glasses could do. Remember, I was so good I didn’t even have to make rehearsal.
Ten minutes before the curtain went up, I took my place on stage in my designated chair. All of the old-timers were used to the routine, and for them it was just another show. But I could hardly be nonchalant about playing on the same stage where James Brown had recorded one of the greatest live albums ever. Where Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, the Jackson 5, and so many musical gods had gotten their start. Even Jimi Hendrix had won the fabled amateur night contest, and delighted its intolerant crowd, with his acrobatic guitar-playing virtuosity in 1964.
I was so nervous thinking about all that history, and pleasing the folks on the other side of that closed curtain, that I didn’t really pay attention to the coffin that was on the stage off to my right. As the conductor put his hands up to cue the band, the curtain went up, and out of the coffin popped Screamin’ Jay. His face was made up to look like a skeleton, and it scared me half to death. I jumped out of my chair, screamed, instinctively pulled out my guitar cable, and ran stage right.
The entire audience burst into uncontrollable laughter while Screamin’ Jay chased me around the stage. Then I realized the whole band, if not the entire management, was in on it. It played great to the crowd because I was genuinely afraid, and they all knew it. My nervousness and complete shock caught me by surprise, and for this experienced kung fu practitioner, flight took over, not fight.
I finally got it together and returned to my seat to thunderous applause, and the show went on. The “youngblood” had passed a trial by fire at the Apollo. Needless to say, Screamin’ Jay was a smash that night, and after that, all the old-timers became my friends and personal faculty of R&B, funk, and soul. The first thing they taught me was how to interpret R&B notation. Though the music looks the same as jazz (and sometimes classical), you don’t feel it the same way. The band’s members had played with everyone from wannabes at the infamous amateur night contests, to the current crop of one-hit wonders, as well as superstars lik
e Stevie, Aretha, and Diana, giants so big you need only mention them by their first names.
They schooled me to always be on my toes and expect the unexpected.
THE APOLLO WAS LIKE the black Colosseum: it was thumbs-up or thumbs-down, and you were shown no mercy if you couldn’t cut the mustard. By the time I’d finished my stint at the Apollo, I had played with artists on every rung of the R&B ladder. I was now ready to go after the brass ring and what was to be the most wonderful school of hard knocks on this planet.
And believe me, you needed to be prepared for the Chitlin’ Circuit.
(Illustration credit 6.2)
* Woodly Valsuka, an early video art pioneer, is believed to have recorded a portion of the jam session. But I’ve never heard it.
(Illustration credit 6.3)
part 2
Roam If You Want To
(Illustration credit 2.1)
seven
Chic Sh*t Happens: The Rise and Call of the Disco Revolution
IT WAS AN EARLY FALL FRIDAY NIGHT AT THE FAIRTREE LOUNGE, A Bronx hot spot that featured live music for a slick crowd straight out of the latest Blaxploitation flick. These were the early seventies, and polyester shirts with long flyaway collars, large-brimmed hats, and double-knit wool suits with Missoni patterns were standard dress.
I’d been recommended by a guitarist friend as a last-minute substitute for the guitarist in Hack Bartholomew’s better-than-average pick-up band. As a sub, I didn’t know a soul on the stage, but they were playing an R&B song called “Sissy Strut” in the key of C, and I hopped right onstage with my arch-top jazz guitar and joined in.
Bartholomew’s band wasn’t top shelf, but Hack’s trumpet playing had soulful flair and he gigged with Joe Simon, a soul chart-topper. Hack was a solid front man and knew how to put on a good show: something you had to know to work at the Fairtree, a mid-level gig on the infamous Chitlin’ Circuit, a string of black nightclubs that stretched from Buffalo, New York, to South Florida. The same way Jewish entertainers had the Borscht Belt, soul musicians had the Chitlin’ Circuit. Most R&B acts east of the Rockies worked it on some level. There would be no Commodores, Impressions, Marvin Gaye, LaBelle, Hendrix, or Funkadelic without it.