Mack pushed six of us—Fred Humphrey on piano, Louis Satterfield on trombone, Don Myrick on saxophone, Chuck Handy on trumpet, Ernest McCarthy on bass, and myself on drums—to form a group called the Jazzmen. We spent many hours together rehearsing nonstop, reading the music for accuracy, adding showmanship, and practicing routines. This was new for me. Much of my enduring musical work ethic was born right there.
“You kids are getting good,” said James Mack when he walked in on a rehearsal one day.
“We know,” Satterfield responded jokingly.
“I think you guys are ready for a challenge.”
The Harvest Moon Festival was an annual music contest that was sponsored by the Chicago Sun-Times. It was a big deal. Eddie Fisher was the headliner that particular year, performing for the big finale after the contest. The odds were against us: there were many more experienced performers. We took to the stage and played our hearts out, giving it our best. Amazingly, we won, in a validation of our talent and what could happen when we worked hard. That night Satterfield was bigger than life. Though we were all young men, Satt was still like the daddy, saying, “We fucked ’em up, didn’t we?”
The victory put enough wind in our sails to encourage us to enter the 1963 Collegiate Jazz Festival, a two-day event on March 29 and 30 at the University of Notre Dame. Steve Allen, Stan Kenton, Henry Mancini, and my future good friend Quincy Jones were all advisers to the prestigious competition. The great arranger Manny Albam, who did arrangements for Count Basie, Stan Getz, Dizzy Gillespie, and many other music stars, was one of the judges. DownBeat’s Leonard Feather was a judge as well. We were all nervous, except for Satt, who confidently said, “We got this.”
We won our division.
Not too long after this triumph, Satterfield became more interested in playing bass. He was a great trombonist, but he quickly became an absolute monster on the bass. In time Satt became to Chicago what James Jamerson was to Detroit—simply the best damn electric bass player around. Satterfield started to secure us gigs—me on drums and him on bass. I was shy, and Satt was strong. Satt taught me how to stand up for myself. I needed that motivation because in the brave new world of Chicago, in the early 1960s, I had to be tough, or I would have gotten run over. There was always someone trying to hustle someone else. If it wasn’t to steal your stuff, it was to steal your mind and lead you into a darker life. “Watch that dude, Maurice, he’s bad news,” Satterfield would often say in those days. or “That motherfucker ain’t worth a warm cup of spit.” I always took his advice. He could smell bullshit no matter how well someone spoke or dressed. These hustlers hung around musicians because of the nightlife. Cash money was flowing in the nightclubs. There were women to seduce or women paid to seduce you. Of course there were drugs, which I detested. There were many traps that could have easily taken me off track, but all I wanted to do was play music and earn a living doing it.
I considered myself a groove master on drums, and Satt was a self-proclaimed rhythm king. In a band there must be chemistry between the bass player and drummer, or you have nothing. Satt and I interpreted rhythm in the same way. We were tight and complementary to each other’s styles. We fluidly anticipated each other’s moves. We morphed into one musician. We were soon working steadily, mostly on the weekends. When the gigs started to pour in, eventually we performed during the week. The folks at St. Luke’s Presbyterian were cool in letting me often leave early. Running like the wind, I’d dash out the front doors of the hospital, dart up the stairs, hop on the L train, get off, and sprint the six long blocks to my apartment. I’d grab the bulky military green bags in which I carried my drums, throw the big bass drum bag over my shoulder, grab the other two, and dash out the door and right back up to the L train. Occasionally a friend would pick me up, but that was the exception, not the rule.
Between gigging, Crane College, and working at the hospital, something had to give. I had a lot of gigs lined up. Since I was making more money performing, I quit the hospital. Then all my gigs fell through. I mean, all my gigs fell through. Just like that. Damn!
That winter of 1962 was grueling in Chicago. It was cold as hell, and I was more than broke—thirty cents away from having a quarter. As a proud man, I sure was not going to ask Dad or Mother Dear for help. No way. I also didn’t believe in calling on my friends. In October that year, Booker T. had just had one of the biggest hit records in the country with “Green Onions.” I mean, it was a smash. Even though it was an instrumental, it was all over the radio that winter, with that great Hammond B-3 organ opening lick. Although I was happy for Booker, his breakout success put doubt in me. I was like, Damn, did I screw up? Should I have stayed in Memphis? I could have been a part of Booker T. & the MGs. Or maybe I could have gotten a gig at Stax Records, where David Porter was just getting going and would soon write Sam & Dave’s biggest hits, “Soul Man” and “Hold On, I’m Comin’.” As I sat in my cold apartment, I knew they both would have sent me some money, but I was too invested in keeping up the grand facade that I was doing just fine.
I never wanted to ask anybody for anything—that was just me. It still is. But I was deep in the valley. I stared at my drum set with almost some resentment toward it. I kept my fear and worry firmly bound up. I was praying that my landlord wouldn’t put me out. Self-doubt began to creep its way into my spirit. That’s what fear, real or imagined, can do to you. No money, many days hungry, I was dropping weight like crazy. I had this blue-green glass jar that I would put chump change in. Every day I would go down to this Greek restaurant. The proprietor, the huge hairy Greek cat, would cheerfully say, “Hello, my friend, same thing today?” They had this great deal: pita bread, some veggies, and a piece of meat, all for $1. I ate that way for a few months, one meal a day, one dollar a day.
Since I wasn’t taking proper care of myself, I got really sick. I called it a bad case of the flu. Now I realize it was probably some kind of hellish pneumonia. I had never been that ill in my life. I was roaming the streets one day, and I stopped and sat at a bus stop on Cermak Road. My eyes were almost shut, like I had been in a boxing match. I was coughing up marble-size balls of mucus and wheezing so loud in my head that it was driving me insane. I must have looked pretty pitiful, because people were looking at me like I was on dope, drunk, or homeless. I put my head between my legs and cried out, “God, help me. Give me strength to endure. I know it’s not supposed to be this way. Please, Father, lift me up, please, Father, please.”
Within a week I had a gig.
Deliverance. Grace. Mercy. Whatever you want to call it, things gradually started to turn around. Remembering what God has already brought me through continues to give me the courage to press forward. Like my experience as a boy in the cotton fields of Joiner, Arkansas, Cermak Road has become in my memory one of those things that keep my faith alive. I cried out to God, and I know for sure he heard and answered my prayer. I don’t believe that when the Creator answers our prayers, he just stops there. He puts in our hearts a new design, a new and unexpected direction for us to reach and expand to, inwardly.
Time moved on and then
Life and I became the best of friends
There’s no limit to
All the smiles in life that’s in store for you
So I found thru my desire
I could take it to the sky—baby,
Now my heart can fly
—“Take It to the Sky,” Faces, 1980
Through answered prayer, things started to look up. My reputation as a drummer began to expand. After my Cermak Road breakdown, I wasn’t turning down any gig, anywhere, anytime. In late September of 1963 someone got me a gig at the legendary Vee-Jay Records. In my mind Vee-Jay was the record label bar none in Chicago. The fact that it represented the Spaniels had an emotional significance, too. There was no doo-wop group that I’d loved more than the Spaniels during my teenage years in Memphis. Vee-Jay was also one of the first independent record labels owned by black folks, the husband-and-wife team of Vivia
n and James Bracken. Calvin Carter, Vivian’s brother, was the head cat/A&R man.
My first day of working for Vee-Jay, however, everyone in the studio was talking about the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, where four little girls were murdered. Calvin said, “How some cracker could do that on the Lord’s day, I’ll never know.” I was quiet as I set up my drums, reflecting the somber tone in the studio. For me, progressive Chicago seemed far away from the turmoil of the South.
Calvin Carter took an immediate liking to my playing. My experience with Vee-Jay was significant for me musically and businesswise. The Bracken and Carter family had built something that was theirs. They took the risk, and they were winning. It set a new idea in my head about what it meant to be in the music business—ownership. This became another new dream. One of the first records I played on at Vee-Jay was Betty Everett’s “You’re No Good.” The song was a crucial moment in Betty’s career. It peaked at No. 51 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 5 on the Cashbox R&B chart. But Vee-Jay being a force on Chicago radio, it was a much bigger hit in the Chicago area in late November of 1963. Betty’s first single flopped on Vee-Jay, but the success of “You’re No Good” kept Betty in the mix until she had her huge hit with “The Shoop Shoop Song (It’s in His Kiss).”
“You’re No Good” was a major turning point in my pursuits. You know there’s an old joke in the music business that if you are associated with a hit record in any possible way, that association will keep you working for years. You could be the janitor that cleaned up after the record was recorded or the guy who set up the microphone stand, the adage went; any affiliation with a smash record would always get you a gig somewhere. After “You’re No Good,” my work doubled almost overnight, and it was a huge confidence booster.
I was riding high. I had a hit record and a little bit of money in my pocket. More than once I said, “Yes, darling, that’s me playing drums on ‘You’re No Good.’ Want to come over to my place?” For many weeks I got gig after gig after gig. My smooth sailing came to a sinking end in mid-December, when I got drafted. Vietnam didn’t dominate the news in 1963. The Kennedy assassination was still the all-encompassing story of the day, and would remain so for quite some time. But young Americans of every color were already burning draft cards in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. This was before the draft lottery that was supposed to make the draft more “fair.” It was obvious to me and anyone else with half a brain that the most often drafted were the poor or working class. I was in shock when I received the letter, and scared to death. After an hour or so of brooding, I got myself on the L train and just rode, going nowhere in particular. As it clickety-clacked, I tried to think what in the world I was going to do.
I wasn’t going to Canada. I wasn’t going to hide, either. I was already pretty high-strung, and that would have driven me out of my mind. I didn’t want to be labeled a conscientious objector. I then remembered a tale about a guy getting deferred by acting crazy. Mmmmm. Maybe? I continued on the train to the Henry Horner projects, and to Mother Dear’s. Dad had plenty of medical books. I picked up a couple on mental illness and psychiatry, jotting down the characteristics of paranoia, psychosis, and schizophrenia.
One week later, I went down to the induction center looking as disheveled as humanly possible. My hair was all over my head. I was unbathed and funky, wearing mismatched shoes. I tried not to overplay it, but I was definitely putting out the signals of an unbalanced person. As I waited, I rocked ever so slightly back and forth, mumbling softly under my breath. My eyes were shifty, like I was watching a tissue blow in the wind. I was drawing attention. Some sergeant came up to me and said, “Young man, do you have a problem?”
I responded with a stark stare and big bulging eyes. I didn’t say a word. He tried again, louder this time: “Young man, do you have a problem?”
“Yeah, motherfucker, Africa is the problem,” I said.
The soldier grabbed my arm, lifted me to my feet, and closely escorted me into another room. There were two other men sitting in the bright room, one black and one white. I waited and waited for what seemed like an eternity. When I was finally called, a soldier came in, stood me up, and walked me into another bright white room with a gray steel desk. The soldier sat me down and stood by the door. I guess it was a doctor who then walked in and sat across from me. He began to ask me a series of questions, routine ones at first: What’s your name? Where do you live? Then he got to the nitty-gritty. “If you were given a rifle right now, what would you do?” Without skipping a beat, I said, “I’d stand up on this desk and shoot all you motherfuckers.” The interview was quickly concluded. I got my deferment.
4
The Chess Lessons
Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.
—William Butler Yeats
In the winter of 1963–64, Satterfield and I heard that Chess Records was looking for a house band. With the success of “You’re No Good,” we felt confident or cocky enough to put a thirteen-piece band together to audition. We enlisted all of our buddies at Crane Junior College—Satterfield on bass, Gerald Sims on guitar, and myself on drums. We also put together a ten-piece horn section. We rehearsed the band like hell, causing some tension in the group.
It was an extremely cold Chicago day when we were pulling our equipment out of the car at 2120 South Michigan Avenue. Sonny Thompson, who was already established at Chess as a piano player, sat in with us at the audition. We played a twelve-bar blues. By the time we hit the last note, Leonard Chess walked in from the control room and said, “This is great! However, we only need a bass player, a drummer, and a guitar player.”
The horn players were dejected and pissed with Satterfield and me, believing we had led them astray. But Satterfield, Sims, and I were on our way. The first day on the job, I formally met Billy Davis, the relatively new A&R man hired by Leonard and Phil Chess. The Chess brothers were two Jewish immigrants from Poland who had built their label from the ground up. Billy had been working in Detroit with Berry Gordy at Motown before then. Billy was the epitome of class. He was a sharp dresser, well groomed, and most of all, extremely professional.
The Chess brothers and Billy wanted to establish a Motown production-assembly-line way of making records, so songwriters, producers, and band would be all on staff and in-house. When we first started, we actually had to punch a time clock! Once after a particularly grueling day, I said to Billy, “Man we gotta stop this punching-a-clock shit.” He responded, “Don’t talk to me, talk to Leonard.” I walked into Leonard’s office as he was loudly slurping a cup of coffee.
“What do you want, White?” he shot out in his usual caustic tone.
“Leonard, punching a clock doesn’t work for us.”
“Sorry, kid. I’m not paying one penny more than I have to.”
“We’re musicians, for Christ’s sake, not assembly-line workers!”
Surprised by my insistent tone, he said nothing. There was about thirty seconds of silence.
“Well, what’s it going to be?” I said.
“OK. You don’t have to punch in anymore.”
“Thanks, Leonard.”
And with that, we officially became staff musicians at Chess Records. The guys were happy. In my cocky move, I recognized the power of asserting myself. I was still shy, but Fred Humphrey’s encouragement had taken root. I started to feel more like a leader.
Several weeks after this happened, I became hypnotized by Billy Davis. He was behind the eight ball, but he seemed unfazed. He always appeared in control, though he had an enormous job and was faced with a huge challenge. Chess Records was a successful record label, but in the early to mid-1960s, music was changing fast. James Brown, the Beatles, and Motown were changing the public’s ears. The blues records that had put Chess on the map were becoming old hat. Though he had help from Gene Barge, an arranger and incredible sax player, the decisions on what songs and which artists to cut fell on Billy Davis’s shoulders.
Personally, I felt as if the musical sophistication of the Motown artists was the future of R&B music. The Beatles didn’t even turn my ears until a year later, with Rubber Soul.
After the sessions were done for the day, if I didn’t have another gig that night, I started hanging around the studio, talking to Billy, who was friendly and informative, taking me under his wing. He told me many Motown stories. His tales about the Four Tops, Berry Gordy, and Smokey Robinson fascinated me.
I soon found out that he favored me because I was critical to what he needed. Everybody at Chess Records was completely obsessed with the Motown sound, and that sound was largely about the beat. Whether it was the shuffling or driving the four beats on the snare drum, I had the Motown sound down. I had perfected that stuff. Soul music has by and large always been about the beat, and musicians, producers, and executives relied on me to provide that beat. It was serious business, and I was ready.
After one of my early sessions at Chess, pianist/songwriter Raynard Miner, who is blind, said, “Wait up, Maurice.” Grabbing his white cane, he walked over to me.
“Maurice, you got that POP in your snare, that real hard-driving backbeat. I love it.”
“Thanks, Raynard. That means a lot coming from you.”
Raynard was a songwriter who worked hard and was serious about his craft. He was always improving. His acknowledgment signaled that my years of relentless practicing were paying off. One thing that made me different from other drummers was that I worked very hard at maintaining tempo, not dragging or accelerating. I practiced for hours on end with a metronome, raising my intensity but never losing the set tempo. It was challenging during that period to find a drummer who could give you both a big backbeat and a rock-steady tempo. I also tried to deliver what the songwriters wanted. A lot of musicians were ego-driven and kind of blew off the songwriters’ suggestions. It was like they were saying, I’m the musician, you’re just the songwriter—now run along. I respected the songwriters. I think that helped me not only build relationships with the songwriters but understand their mind-set as well.
My Life with Earth, Wind & Fire Page 5